Is Darwin's Theory of Evolution True? Part Three

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Aloysium said:
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LeafByNiggle:
“Materialism”
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Materialism philosophically is a theory or belief that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications.

When we speak of someone being materialistic, we are saying something different, that they consider things of the world - material possessions, pleasure, fame and power to be more important than those of the spirit.
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If that is your definition of materialism, then evolution is not materialistic, because it makes no claims about what is more important and what is less important.
 
anon65111186 said:
they wanted a concrete explanation for what happened on a physical level and what that has to do with the apes and other fossils.
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Matter, simple organisms, plants and animals exist in nature as part of a hierarchy of being, the attributes of each strata coming together under the human spirit which makes them whole, one in the person. We perceive, think, feel and act as a unity who participates in the totality of creation and in relation to God.

That ontological hierarchy which we are, came into existence temporally, one layer at a time. There was once only an amorphous plasma, then atoms, followed by complex molecules, which were brought together in the creation of ever more complex life forms.

As physical beings, we were created as part of Eden to care for it and to know know God. In order to do so we must have a certain physical structure and brain capacity. If we think of matter as more than clumps of stuff, but rather as information, that information which determines our existence includes that of each stratum in the hierarchy of being below us. Apes could not become human. We are a new creation and the most convincing evidence that i see says we were made perfect and fell. So no group or single hominid led to the human race although the information to construct them would have been utilized to create us. We were created new, utilizing matter which is shaped to form us in accordance to how it is structured and functions within living organisms on earth.
 
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Excuse me, but that’s what you did, misreading what I have been saying.
 
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Were the standard theory of evolution to speak about life, it would have to recognize the soul of living things, the organizing principle that makes something alive, and more than the simple being of molecules no matter how complex they are. But it doesn’t, choosing to understand life in terms of genetics and the structure and activity of atoms and molecules. That focus on matter as it seeks to explain our origins in terms of random mutations of the genome, makes it materialistic, asserting a belief that it is chemical activity that underlies the growing complexity of organisms that happened in time.

Doing so it leads us astray. Creationist views hold that everything was made perfect but became corrupt. Darwinism sees corruption as the means by which things became diversified and that what managed to make it through and procreate did so by chance.

A materialistic ( matter is the basis of existence, philosophical system does lead to a materialistic (self-centred) approach to life.
 
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Aloysium said:
Were the standard theory of evolution to speak about life, it would have to recognize the soul of living things, the organizing principle that makes something alive, and more than the simple being of molecules no matter how complex they are.
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You are importing religious specifics into science here. A soul is a religious concept, and is not held by all religions:
“All the elements of reality are soulless.”
When one realises this by wisdom,
then one does not heed ill.
This is the Path of Purity.

– Dhammapada 20:7
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Since science does not require adherence to any specific religion, you will need to provide scientific evidence of the existence of a soul. From the Buddhist point of view you are suffering from a mistaken view: what you think is your soul, isn’t.

rossum
 
Aloysium said:
We are a new creation and the most convincing evidence that i see says we were made perfect and fell.
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Were the animals perfect to? Or imperfect? After all, they fell as well didn’t they?
Aloysium said:
A materialistic ( matter is the basis of existence, philosophical system does lead to a materialistic (self-centred) approach to life.
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Perhaps, but science adheres only to material because it can’t test spiritual things, make hypothesis, or otherwise do experimentation on spirit or soul. It can’t be detected by any tool or measurement, and so we have no reliable way of getting data on “spirit” or “soul” because by it’s nature, soul is invisible and undetectable to the senses.

Soul expresses itself through matter, and that is where science begins and ends. Nothing wrong with that.

Even Catholic scientists who believe in spirit cannot apply science to soul or spirit even if they rigorously tried, because spirit is itself beyond material and beyond science.
 
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The Church has never accepted textbook only evolution. The general concept regarding man cannot be tested.
 
Interaction-based evolution: how natural selection and nonrandom mutation work together

Below is an outline of the main points made in this paper:
  1. Mutation is the outcome of a nonrandom, biological
    process.
  2. It follows that mutation combines information from
    multiple loci into one
  3. Since the theory proposed here holds that mutation
    is nonrandom and combines information from
    multiple loci, it predicts that the determination of
    mutation is complex. Evidence from cryptic variance
    in the mutation rate across loci and from
    mutation-recombination hotspots is consistent with
    this prediction and has no explanation from
    traditional theory

Loading…

biologydirect.biomedcentral.com
 
benjamin1973 said:
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Glark:
I don’t think so. The idea that humans evolved from simpler creatures has been around since well before Christ.
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lolwut? You sure?
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“Anaximander held an evolutionary view of living things. The first creatures originated from the moist element by evaporation. Man originated from some other kind of animal, such as fish, since man needs a long period of nurture and could not have survived if he had always been what he is now” - Anaximander, Encyclopaedia Britannica.

“Evolutionary theory begins with the Ionian philosopher Anaximander (ca 611-546 BCE) … he was … one of the first to attempt an explanation of the origin and evolution of the cosmos basd on natural laws” - Evolution and Paleontology in the Ancient World, ucmp.berkeley.edu

Anaximander believed plants and animals arose from mud and that humans were not present at first, but arose later on from fish. Sound familiar?

"Anaximander lost out to Aristotle in the running for Most Famous Ancient Greek Philosopher. That’s a shame, as he may have been the first person to come up with the idea of “animals evolving from other animals.” The only problem is, the spin on it he came up with involved post-puberty humans hatching from fish people.

Darwin’s era was not the first time that people began wondering where humans come from … One of the first to come up with a fact-based solution to this was Anaximander – a Greek philosopher born around 610 BC … Anaximander believed in a progression of animal forms, and that “humans were born from other kinds of animals.” … Anaximander was observational, and one of the things he observed was fetal development. At a time when people still lived in close contact with the animals they ate, this wasn’t so unusual. He had the ability to look at fetal, or still-developing, mammals, birds, and fish. It also appears that he had some experience looking at human fetuses in early stages of development. To Anaximander, the earliest stage of fetal development, in any animal, looked like an early developing fish. If something gestated long enough, he reasoned, it could grow into all kinds of things." - The First Theory of Evolution Involved Fish People, io9.gizmodo.com

So theories of evolution have been around for at least 2500 years - and here you are thinking ToE is the consequence of modern science!
 
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anon65111186 said:
What’s lame, didn’t the devil enter the Church through Judas even before Jesus died? You shouldn’t be surprised if there are warnings of the devil entering the church. That’s why we pray for the Church, that we might not fall into temptation, right?
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Name one other occasion when a Pope has declared that Satan has entered the Church.
 
rossum said:
All hominids and all animals can be described as “clay”.
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Name one scientist who describes hominids and other animals as “clay”.
We know that the Bible can lave out intermediate stages when summarising. See Matthew 1:1 for an example: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.” That verse leaves out many intermediate stages between Abraham and David and between David and Jesus.
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This is a fine example of twisting Scripture to accomodate evolution.
 
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They also had the idea of atoms, of non-geocentrism, and so on, arrived at largely by philosophical means. The difference with the ToE is that it was developed exclusively in order to explain observable features, and is not dependent in any way on those philosophical speculations.

That’s what is difference about conservative religious positions and science. Science reserves the right, and in fact very much rewards, new thinking and improvements or challenges to old ideas. As soon as a modified or new idea better explains that which can be observed, there will be a period of challenge and then the better idea will be adopted.

Your view on the Bible doesn’t allow for this. It’s like you’ve said, “Anaximander had it right, so everybody can just stop digging up those fossils, or considering new ideas in view of what we’ve observed in the past 3000 years.” Obviously, this is not the position any scientist would take. Nor is it the position the Catholic church takes. Nor should it be the position you take.
 
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. . . or energy properly understanding something you’re arguing against before you start spewing forth your arguments.
 
Since Adam had preternatural gifts, on eof them being infused knowledge, what do you think were the limits of his knowledge?
 
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