Is Darwin's Theory Of Evolution True? Part Two

[edwest211]

Very well put. It may be or may be not. Not “evolution is a fact,” which I’ve seen on this board before.

 

[edwest211]

I have a car but there’s no way to explain how it came to exist? Evolution just spits out organisms until something works and then it self-upgrades? Time + blind chance = nothing functional.

 

[edwest211]

Simple questions usually are the best.

 

[buffalo]

Did He share his vision with you so you can judge a bad or good design?

God revealed to us His original designs were “good”. It was the fall that caused the corruption and consequent degeneration.

 

[rossum]

God revealed to us His original designs were “good”.

Not all of His designs, the original design was “not good” until He got round to fixing it later:

Genesis 2:18 And the Lord God said: It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a help like unto himself. (emphasis added)

rossum

 

[Techno2000]

Techno2000:

The point was… how did this fish survive if it had to wait around for millions of years for its lighted fishing lure to develop and evolve.

That fish wasn’t there yet. All that had to survive and reproduce were that fish’s ancestors. Those ancestors were not the same as the modern Anglerfish.

rossum

Some kind of creature had to slowly morph into becoming the Anglerfish. Just like apes had to slowly morph into supposedly becoming man.

 

[IWantGod]

“Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense – an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection – is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.”

Metaphysically speaking it would be incorrect to say that God did not have a plan. But remember God allows things to act according to their nature; God allows for the existence of a natural world insofar as he allows for the existence of secondary causes. The universe is clearly not a puppet on a string. This does not mean there is no purpose to it. Even if we allow for truly random events this does not necessarily contradict God’s plans. And while the Cardinal clearly vents against concepts such as natural selection and random variation it is not clear to me at all that such ideas are against church teaching. This particular Cardinal assumes that random variation and natural selection are inherently atheistic. The Church however is against people like Richard Dawkins who uses and abuses these ideas to create the illusion that natural evolution is favorable of an atheistic ontology.

And while i reject intelligent design i do not deny that teleology is evident in nature. Things clearly act for intelligible ends without being conscious of those ends. The fact that you have a brain to think and eyes to see all acting in unison with other bodily functions to preserve a holistic being is teleological. Its impossible to fully understand bodily functions without also talking about the purpose they serve in terms of the body they comprise. There is goal direction in nature. Its just not design.; God is not Bob the builder.

 

[IWantGod]

yep yep yep yep yep.

What i will say is that there is anthropomorphism in the bible especially in genesis.

 

[edwest211]

Keep posting that since God was involved. Somehow, people are missing the fact that this is not a ‘science only’ discussion.

 

[rossum]

Some kind of creature had to slowly morph into becoming the Anglerfish. Just like apes had to slowly morph into supposedly becoming man.

By George, I think he’s got it!

rossum

 

[edwest211]

Amazing, just amazing storytelling. Apes just suddenly began having less strong babies that … I’ll leave it there.

 

[edwest211]

We are made in the image and likeness of God for a reason, not the end product of a very, very large number of options.

 

[rossum]

Amazing, just amazing storytelling. Apes just suddenly began having less strong babies that … I’ll leave it there.

Amazing, just amazing. Someone thinks they can discuss the relative arm strengths of humans and apes without mentioning brachiating. Gibbons do it a lot, chimps do it a bit and humans don’t do it.

rossum

 

[edwest211]

That’s true. Tarzan had to use a rope.

 

[IWantGod]

Pope John Paul II stated in his 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, “If the human body takes its origin from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is immediately created by God.”

 

[Techno2000]

edwest211:

Amazing, just amazing storytelling. Apes just suddenly began having less strong babies that … I’ll leave it there.

Amazing, just amazing. Someone thinks they can discuss the relative arm strengths of humans and apes without mentioning brachiating. Gibbons do it a lot, chimps do it a bit and humans don’t do it.

rossum

That little monkey is awesome

 

[Aloysium]

Lots of bad faith, in different senses of the word, “graces” these threads, wild assertions out of context.
Thank you on behalf of those who read your longer posts, which do inevitably clarify the matter.
In recognition that it takes a certain effort to track these things down and to post them.

 

[Ender]

Darwinian evolution does not speak about paths. It does speak about information that gets inherited. And that is the hard part. That is what takes millions of year to evolve.

Except in this case it occurred in four days.

These results suggest that new functions can evolve far quicker and much more easily than anyone previously expected.

It was somewhat surprising. So what?

Inheritable changes occurred in four days rather than taking “millions of year to evolve”. I’m not sure “surprising” fully captures their reaction.

Darwinian evolution makes no claims about how this particular experiment should have turned out.

Really? I guess we can only wonder why the researchers were “surprised” by the results.

The selection pressure does not need to build up a complicated structure from nothing, so it is not surprising that the results occur in short order.

In the case of the moths, selection pressure did not build up anything at all. Apparently even non-changes in the gene pool are proof of Darwinism.

This is not evolution because the result was achieved through direct gene manipulation and not through selective pressures.

It is surely not Darwinian evolution, but it is evolution nonetheless, at least according to the evolutionary biologists involved in the experiment.

Dr Louise Johnson, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading, said: "Evolution has been described as a process of ‘tinkering’, but this work shows that evolution can be remarkably repeatable.

Repeatable…not something ordinarily associated with blind chance.

If the information that selects between black or white colors is not in the DNA, it is in some other part of the genetic inherited structure.

Where else does one find heritable genetic structures other than in DNA?

But the distinction between that experiment and the flagella experiment is that the later used gene editing rather than selective pressures.

A certain form of bacteria was artificially created, but then they were left alone, at which point their response to their environment was driven by “selective pressures”. Their changes were heritable and occurred within four days (however many generations this represents). The “evolutionary” moth “changes” were not heritable. In the first case, evolution that is non-Darwinian is dismissed as not evolution, while in the second case evolution that doesn’t even occur is cited as proof of Darwinism.

 

[benjamin1973]

No, I know nothing about God’s intentions, but I think we can both agree that “good” doesn’t have to mean “optimally functional in the present moment.” When I say the design of humans is bad, I don’t mean morally or metaphysically bad-- I mean that there are things in the human body which may harm us or prevent us from being maximally healthy on an individual level, or which seem to serve no purpose.

I see no reason why God might not let the story of animal development on Earth unfold due to physical rules He laid out at the beginning. Obviously, if He is going to allow the climate to change over millions of years, then He would have the foresight to put a mechanism into animals to allow them to adapt…

 

[IWantGod]

“All the observations concerning the development of life lead to a similar conclusion. The evolution of living beings, of which science seeks to determine the stages and to discern the mechanism, presents an internal finality which arouses admiration. This finality which directs beings in a direction for which they are not responsible or in charge, obliges one to suppose a Mind which is its inventor, its creator.”

So he is talking about final causes.The fact that nature evidently acts for particular intelligible ends that it has no knowledge of. There is goal direction in physical behavior. This is good philosophy and it does not contradict natural selection and random mutations and neither does it need to be taught in the science classroom and it shouldn’t be

“To all these indications of the existence of God the Creator, some oppose the power of chance or of the proper mechanisms of matter. To speak of chance for a universe which presents such a complex organization in its elements and such marvelous finality in its life would be equivalent to giving up the search for an explanation of the world as it appears to us. In fact, this would be equivalent to admitting effects without a cause. It would be to abdicate human intelligence, which would thus refuse to think and to seek a solution for its problems.”

Here, when seen in the proper context of ontology as opposed to science (which is a different subject matter) its clear that he is talking about the ultimate cause (God) being the proper explanation of final causes. He is saying that chance cannot be the ultimate cause of final causes.
Its clear to me at least that he is not denying natural evolution but rather he is arguing that there is a teleology in nature that can only make sense in the context of God as opposed to metaphysical naturalism.

Its interesting because no where does he affirm the legitimacy of the intelligent design theory, the idea that God is a builder or a mechanic or an engineer, all of which is not the same thing as the teleological argument. The Pope is clearly speaking from the perspective of Aquinas and not the perspective of people like Behe.