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niceatheist
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And yet we see specialized organs adapted from organs evolved for other purposes throughout biology. Your personal rejection is, to be blunt, of little merit in my view.
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edwest211
Guest
Assumptions are made, that’s all. And you did not refute anything I wrote. Rejection out of hand is convenient.
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niceatheist
Guest
No, assumptions are not made. These are observations, often based on observations of developmental biology between species. At this point denial is little more than handwaving and saying silly things like “it’s just assumptions”. Special Creation and its variants were long ago debunked, and there is literally 150 years worth of research. Heck, not even the few Creationists in biological fields even make pretense about special creation, invoking Intelligent Design and not even actually denying evolution.\
But tell you what, when you have an alternative explanation for atavisms and homologous features that doesn’t amount to “god did it”, you let me know. Until then, the weight of a century and a half of research so overweighs your views that I’m afraid your views really aren’t worth consideration.
But tell you what, when you have an alternative explanation for atavisms and homologous features that doesn’t amount to “god did it”, you let me know. Until then, the weight of a century and a half of research so overweighs your views that I’m afraid your views really aren’t worth consideration.
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edwest211
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They certainly are worth considering. Intelligent Design best fits what little scientists know and cannot demonstrate. For example, similar body plans in new and old creatures would result in similar instructions being found in each. A head, upper and lower torso, and four limbs. I could 3D model any such skeleton and with some simple adjustments, turn it into another. The complexity of the coding in DNA goes beyond chance.
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PetraG
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I’m a chemist by training. I’m not quite sure I understand your question. You are not implying that there are things in nature that act in an ordered way and then there are the things designed by God? Of course not. Why would we remove everything that acts in an ordered way from the category of those things designed by God?
Everything is designed. Atoms are designed. Electrons are designed. The nature of matter is designed. The entire universe, both material and spiritual (if indeed the two are actually separate aspects of the created universe, as opposed to a dichotomy based on what we can perceive with our physical senses) is designed. By that, I mean that all created things exist and act according to laws ordained by Providence. That means that everything is either designed by God Himself or is made as it is by God’s permissive will which gave the creative faculty to sentient beings such as human beings and the angels.
This is why there is no necessary incompatibility between evolution as a mechanism of change in the natural world and the idea that God created the natural world. Do we not know the world around us changes? Of course we do. Of course, then, we know that these changes occur according to the will of God, whether by direct creation or by permission given to a creative being who was, in turn, created by God.
So, there are not “natural” things and “supernatural” things, I think, but perhaps rather “natural things,” created by God alone and “artificial things,” created at least partly by the will of beings given free will and the creative faculty by God. I mean to say that our free will is natural; the wages of sin are artificial. The universe around us has more of the artificial about it than we can appreciate, I think. The wages of rebellion go farther than we know.
There is God and there are created things. We don’t know much of what there is to be known about either one, but we certainly should not be arguing about the nature of God based on our current level of appreciation of the mechanisms by which God has chosen to create the universe around us or how much God has allowed creative beings to put their stamp on God’s creation.
Everything is designed. Atoms are designed. Electrons are designed. The nature of matter is designed. The entire universe, both material and spiritual (if indeed the two are actually separate aspects of the created universe, as opposed to a dichotomy based on what we can perceive with our physical senses) is designed. By that, I mean that all created things exist and act according to laws ordained by Providence. That means that everything is either designed by God Himself or is made as it is by God’s permissive will which gave the creative faculty to sentient beings such as human beings and the angels.
This is why there is no necessary incompatibility between evolution as a mechanism of change in the natural world and the idea that God created the natural world. Do we not know the world around us changes? Of course we do. Of course, then, we know that these changes occur according to the will of God, whether by direct creation or by permission given to a creative being who was, in turn, created by God.
So, there are not “natural” things and “supernatural” things, I think, but perhaps rather “natural things,” created by God alone and “artificial things,” created at least partly by the will of beings given free will and the creative faculty by God. I mean to say that our free will is natural; the wages of sin are artificial. The universe around us has more of the artificial about it than we can appreciate, I think. The wages of rebellion go farther than we know.
There is God and there are created things. We don’t know much of what there is to be known about either one, but we certainly should not be arguing about the nature of God based on our current level of appreciation of the mechanisms by which God has chosen to create the universe around us or how much God has allowed creative beings to put their stamp on God’s creation.
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niceatheist
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Intelligent Design explains absolutely nothing. It doesn’t explain the mechanisms involved, it makes no meaningful prediction. An Intelligent Designer isn’t bound to even use a single code for body plans. It suffers the same problem Creationism does; there is no possible observation that is incompatible with the Intelligent Designer. Intelligent Design explains all possible observations, and thus explains none of them.
Common descent, on the other hand, inevitably predicts that more closely related organisms will have similar biochemistry and body plans. If we found life that did not fit within the hierarchy that we had observed, say where a different set of nucleotides was used, or how they were expressed in the production of proteins (in other words, same genetic building blocks, but a different code), then common descent would be demonstrated to be false. We would have multiple hierarchies that clearly could not have descended from a common ancestors.
The very few attempts any ID advocate has made to show ID’s utility has been rejected as little more than special pleading. Michael Behe’s attempts to demonstrate that the vertebrate immune system must have needed an Intelligent Designer was debunked during the trial itself, when experts showed how researchers have known for decades that the exact observations Behe was trying to invoke were, in fact, demonstrations of how the vertebrate immune system had evolved.
Common descent, on the other hand, inevitably predicts that more closely related organisms will have similar biochemistry and body plans. If we found life that did not fit within the hierarchy that we had observed, say where a different set of nucleotides was used, or how they were expressed in the production of proteins (in other words, same genetic building blocks, but a different code), then common descent would be demonstrated to be false. We would have multiple hierarchies that clearly could not have descended from a common ancestors.
The very few attempts any ID advocate has made to show ID’s utility has been rejected as little more than special pleading. Michael Behe’s attempts to demonstrate that the vertebrate immune system must have needed an Intelligent Designer was debunked during the trial itself, when experts showed how researchers have known for decades that the exact observations Behe was trying to invoke were, in fact, demonstrations of how the vertebrate immune system had evolved.
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edwest211
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I have not seen a demonstrated utility for evolution. Otherwise, new drug development would not be so expensive.
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niceatheist
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It explains how the life we see today came to be. That’s a pretty tremendous amount of utility. It explains what we observe at the molecular level, what we observe at the phylogenic level, and what we see at the morphological level. It is the grand unifying theory of biology.
As opposed to a pretty empty claim that somehow, someway, by means no one can explain, God/Intelligent Designer did something.
As opposed to a pretty empty claim that somehow, someway, by means no one can explain, God/Intelligent Designer did something.
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niceatheist
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I’d just like to add that I do not view evolution as some sort of falsification of God. While I am not religious, I see nothing in evolution that contradicts Christianity. Certain explicit claims, like Special Creation, certainly are debunked by evolutionary biology and related disciplines, but generally my observation has been that most Christian scientists and Christians who support science simply view evolution as a natural mechanism that is an expression of God’s creative power.
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Crocus
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Interesting article, “Psychologists say babies know right from wrong … “
In any case, nurture is very important in shaping our young ones to grow to be caring and supportive adults who choose right from wrong.
but I disagree with their conclusion. I think babies may display empathy in choosing the helpful character, rather than knowing right from wrong. Do then, those who chose the unhelpful character display a somewhat sociopathic tendency? Perhaps not, maybe they were just a little less matured and chose randomly.In another experiment the babies were shown a toy dog puppet attempting to open a box, with a friendly teddy bear helping the dog, and an unfriendly teddy thwarting his efforts by sitting on him. After watching at least half a dozen times the babies were given the opportunity to choose one of the teddy bears. The majority chose the helpful teddy.
In any case, nurture is very important in shaping our young ones to grow to be caring and supportive adults who choose right from wrong.
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niceatheist
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A notion of “fairness” has been observed in a number of species. I’d agree that it is probably a step too far to call it an innate knowledge of right from wrong, but I’d say that, particularly in social species, some instinctual capacity to recognize good behavior from bad behavior is critical.
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PetraG
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Utility? We humans have only the slightest glimmer of an idea of what God’s creation does or doesn’t “need.”I have not seen a demonstrated utility for evolution. Otherwise, new drug development would not be so expensive.
What need does God have for the universe at all? It is created out of a vast generosity, the generosity of Love itself! It will of course be bountiful beyond any concept of “need” that we might come up with after the fact. What we think the universe “needs” is rather irrelevant.
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Bradskii
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Interesting article, “Psychologists say babies know right from wrong … “
If you are using empathy as a synonym for sympathy then you are using it incorrectly. But empathy (understanding the feeling of others (as opposed to sympathising with them)) is part of the larger picture of where our sense of morality comes from.In another experiment the babies were shown a toy dog puppet attempting to open a box, with a friendly teddy bear helping the dog, and an unfriendly teddy thwarting his efforts by sitting on him. After watching at least half a dozen times the babies were given the opportunity to choose one of the teddy bears. The majority chose the helpful teddy.
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Vonsalza
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That doesn’t smack-down evolution, Ed.I have not seen a demonstrated utility for evolution. Otherwise, new drug development would not be so expensive.
You take cholesterol medication because your body hasn’t had time to evolve a response to the relatively new invention of the deep-fryer.
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edwest211
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What? A lot of the ‘evidence’ is based on going back millions of years. One tiny error gets magnified pretty quickly. I don’t have problems with deep-fryers or cholesterol. I know I shouldn’t eat too much of it or too much of anything.
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Vonsalza
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If I’m reading you right, evolutionary errors (a.k.a. traits that reduce fitness) don’t get magnified. Natural selection kills them.What? A lot of the ‘evidence’ is based on going back millions of years. One tiny error gets magnified pretty quickly.
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edwest211
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I was referring to errors in interpretation related to the very long ages ascribed to fossils. The native environment at any given time millions of years ago has to be taken into account. When did volcanic activity really die down on the early earth? Lots of lava flows that would have killed anything? How about continent surfaces being cracked again and again from rising magma? What was the atmosphere like?
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Vonsalza
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These answers are known Ed.I was referring to errors in interpretation related to the very long ages ascribed to fossils. The native environment at any given time millions of years ago has to be taken into account. When did volcanic activity really die down on the early earth? Lots of lava flows that would have killed anything? How about continent surfaces being cracked again and again from rising magma? What was the atmosphere like?
The oldest rocks formed 3.9 billion years ago (BYA), so the earth was cool enough for something to not melt in the interim between now and then.
Life began almost a billion years after that, about 3.0 BYA. It was pretty much single-celled organisms until about 1.0 BYA. Then, something got really good at photosynthesis and oxygen levels and complex life exploded upon the earth.
As far as the occasional volcanic eruption and super-eruption, you’re totally right - it would have killed everything — that is, everything nearby. If an eruption was powerful enough to torch everything for a 100 mile radius, then there would be things living 101 miles away, and so on.
Easy enough, right?
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buffalo
Guest
Is the DNA code designed? yes
Is the DNA molecule designed? yes
Is the DNA molecule designed? yes
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Bradskii
Guest
By God. Now the $64,000 question:Is the DNA code designed? yes
Is the DNA molecule designed? yes
Name something in the natural world NOT designed by God.
Your time starts…now.
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