Observations by a non believer

[Alindawyl]

I’ll reciprocate. If I present a compelling case, are you strong enough to accept the conclusion? If that’s agreeable, sure, lets swap rationales for believing verses not believing.

However, let’s agree on what evidence is before we start. Evidence isn’t justt “warm and fuzzy” feelings we get when we do a good deed, and, it isn’t a series of what could be coincidences like when someone prays for rain then it really does rain. And it isn’t just what we were told by nice people like good ole Fr. O 'Malley or that saintly good Sister Anne.

Evidence is verifiable fact that tends to establish a proposition as true.

Is it your move or mine? If it’s mine, we may have to wait until later as this is cutting into my bud lite time.

You are more than welcome to present what you view as a “compelling case”. But let me ask for further clarification first. I normally see evidence defined as that which is used to demonstrate the truthfulness of something proprosed for belief/acceptance. The implication is that evidence must be examined before being deemed worthy or unworthy of belief. Your definition specifically states verifiable fact. That would seem to eliminate from the examination process anything which doesn’t meet some kind of predefined set of criteria.

I find myself making the rather uncharitable assumption that you are employing the term “verifiable fact” to define certain things out of the discussion before it even begins. However, I am possibly willing to go with that definition if you can tell me the following:

1. Who is doing the verifying?
2. What process do they use?
3. Why should they be trusted?

Or we could just go with the more general use of the term evidence instead of trying to play legal games by declaring as inadmissible anything we don’t personally like

 

[WmJackP]

You are more than welcome to present what you view as a “compelling case”. But let me ask for further clarification first. I normally see evidence defined as that which is used to demonstrate the truthfulness of something proprosed for belief/acceptance. The implication is that evidence must be examined before being deemed worthy or unworthy of belief. Your definition specifically states verifiable fact. That would seem to eliminate from the examination process anything which doesn’t meet some kind of predefined set of criteria.

I find myself making the rather uncharitable assumption that you are employing the term “verifiable fact” to define certain things out of the discussion before it even begins. However, I am possibly willing to go with that definition if you can tell me the following:

1. Who is doing the verifying?
2. What process do they use?
3. Why should they be trusted?

Or we could just go with the more general use of the term evidence instead of trying to play legal games by declaring as inadmissible anything we don’t personally like

I think you were right the first time. I doubt if either one of us will be able to convince the other. Thanks, anyway.

 

[Ravemacneil]

As long as body and blood are comprised of atoms…

Atoms are not the building blocks of matter. You’re arbitrarily stopping at that point because it allows for the argument that one thing would have to change its substance to become another thing. This is out of touch with modern physics.

Atoms are made of quarks, quarks seem to be made of strings, which though closed or open, are of a single, identical substance. It vibrates one way, copper. Another way, uranium.

If a loaf of bread and my flesh are composed of exactly the same identical physical substance which can be of radically different natures without any acutal change in the substance itself … then what?

I’m not saying M theory is proven, but it’s the best candidate, thus I wouldn’t hinge an argument on the idea that “evidence” says the building blocks of matter are differing types of matter (atoms). Add to this the uncertainty principle and the fact that time is a dimensional creation of the universe and the whole concept of “real” being the sensory measurement of the world of rocks and trees begins to shake like an atheist before God.

Peace,
RMN

 

[WmJackP]

That’s a much more sophisticated god than most tribal gods I’m familiar with - what tribe was this, if you don’t mind my asking?

No God is more sophisticated than the one I grew up with.

 

[jmcrae]

No God is more sophisticated than the one I grew up with.

Right - you grew up with the Christian God, I’m assuming.

I was asking what tribe is this, whose god seems to be not only self-aware, but also apparently egotistical?

 

[hecd2]

There was a nice book written in the early 20th century by Columbia University paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, called From the Greeks to Darwin, in which he argued that evolution is essentially an ancient idea, particularly found in the works of Lucretius, Empedocles and Aristotle…This is the *essence *of evolution, essentially like Charles Darwin’s description from The Origin of Species: evolution is “the preservation of a large number of individuals, which varied more or less in any favourable direction, and of the destruction of a large number which varied in an opposite manner” (Darwin, Origin of Species, Chapter XIV). So I’d say that the ancients and medieval scholastics had a fairly clear understanding of variation and selection, and that it’s the arrogance of modern man to dismiss such insightful considerations by our predecessors.

And I’d say, with all due respect, that this is twaddle and has been shown to be twaddle by Torrey And Felin. Anyone who thinks that the ancients and scholastics have a clear understanding of evolutionary biology, either doesn’t understand what the mediaevals and scholastics understood (both Aristotle and Aquinas believed in eternal essence and the fundamental immutability of species), or doesn’t understand the Theory of Evolution. Osborn’s book was written at least 50 years before the completion of the Modern Synthesis. He himself had no idea about how genetics and natural selection would be synthesised, he had no idea about the biological species concept, he knew nothing of statistical population biology. Moreover, he himself held to the now discredited concept of orthogenesis. It’s preposterous to claim that the ancients and the schoolmen understood that species are mutable and ambiguous, that descent with variation is the source for all of biological diversity, and that the process continues today.

I prefer Mayr’s species definition: “species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations, which are reproductively isolated from other such groups.” Where’s the ambiguity? Individuals can either breed or they can’t and this is the UNIVERSAL ESSENCE of a species. Or do you not believe that species exist?

The biological species concept is, in the absence of better, a good working definition for sexually reproducing living eukaryotes. However, it is neither as clear cut as you suppose (look up ring species and fertile hybridisation at the boundaries of closely related species, and try to understand how the speciation process is not something that results in the binary separation of populations overnight, but one that operates over time to gradually separate populations, where, for a significant period of time the degree and fertility of interbreeding decreases gradually and continuously). Moreover, the biological species definition cannot be applied to past populations of animals, and such species have to be defined purely on morphological and ecological grounds. There is no such thing as the universal essence of a species, as there are always members of a past or extant population that have an uncertain degree of affinity to any given species. A species exists to the extent that we define it as a population with particular characteristics - they do not exist independently of that population. The biological species concept is a nominalist construct if ever there was one.

DNA polymerases generate numerous variations; for example, this high fidelity polymerase introduces changes in 12 per 250,000 bases. This occurs in both somatic and gametic cells. So your theory that all “cells have the same DNA” is mistaken. And you should know better since the variations in gametic cells form the basis of evolution. Or do you not believe in evolution?

Why are you quoting the accuracy of DNA polymerase in vitro? You ignore error correction processes. In vivo, gametes display errors in about 1in 40 million base pairs. In the case of sexually reproducing diploid organisms, given the facts of disjunction and recombination during meiosis, an individual’s DNA in any of his (healthy) cells are hugely more alike than that of any other individual; the differences arising from copy error are insignificant compared with the differences with any other individual - except for identical twins - but then there are two other ways I indicated to identify an individual using their material properties that you have ignored. There is no mystic “essence” underlying the identity of an individual over time - it is simply the same living organism descended mitotically and in direct line from cell generation to cell generation.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

Atoms are not the building blocks of matter. You’re arbitrarily stopping at that point because it allows for the argument that one thing would have to change its substance to become another thing. This is out of touch with modern physics.

Atoms are made of quarks, quarks seem to be made of strings, which though closed or open, are of a single, identical substance. It vibrates one way, copper. Another way, uranium.

If a loaf of bread and my flesh are composed of exactly the same identical physical substance which can be of radically different natures without any acutal change in the substance itself … then what?

I’m not saying M theory is proven, but it’s the best candidate, thus I wouldn’t hinge an argument on the idea that “evidence” says the building blocks of matter are differing types of matter (atoms). Add to this the uncertainty principle and the fact that time is a dimensional creation of the universe and the whole concept of “real” being the sensory measurement of the world of rocks and trees begins to shake like an atheist before God.

The problem with this argument is that its conclusion is that all things are the same matter and we cannot distinguish in any real way between them. The proof of the pudding is, as they say, in the eating. Eat some cyanide instead of some bread, and then come back and tell us that they are the same substance, form and matter. Your attack on reality is one step away from solipsism, for even if our senses are an imperfect conduit to understand reality, they are all we have to connect.

The fact is that in philosophy, matter is not the lowest or simplest “building block” in the universe, otherwise we end up with a nihilistic and impotent concept. Strings might be the matter of quarks, and quarks the matter of nucleons; bricks are the matter of houses, and gold (or platinum or whatever) is the matter of a wedding ring. If we are to make sense of the universe we have to distinguish between different forms of matter at a higher emergent level than strings (or quarks, or nucleons or atoms or even molecules). Bread is the matter of the communion wafer and it remains bread after consecration.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[rvilbig]

then there are two other ways I indicated to identify an individual using their material properties that you have ignored.

To be Thomistically technical, the ways you indicate to distinguish individuals (DNA and host defense) are formal and not material. Thomas actually held that there were graduations of actualized potencies:

“[P] rime matter is in potency, first of all, to the form of an element. When it is existing under the form of an element it is in potency to the form of a mixed body (compound); that is why the elements are matter for the mixed body (compound). etc…” (Summa Contra Gentiles, Chapter 22)

To chime in the M-theory talk, we may say that strings are in a state of potency to the “form” fundamental particles, fundamental particles are in a state of potency to the “form” of subatomic particles, subatomic particles are in a state of potency to the “form” of atoms, atoms are in a state of potency to the “form” of molecules, and so forth. And do note that strings are truly prime matter as they are in an undifferentiated state of potency to both mass and location.

Back to your so-called nominalist conception of species, the molecules of DNA and host defense are actualized to a certain degree, though they still admit potencies to other forms. This is why DNA may undergo tautomeric shifts and wobble pair, and why molecules may interfere in double slit experiments: they are still in a certain degree of potency. Nonetheless, they also possess a certain degree of form. Do you agree that there is a universal definition for “DNA” and “monocyte”? Then you agree that forms exist.

Hope this helps,

-Ryan Vilbig
ryan.vilbig@gmail.com

 

[WmJackP]

Right - you grew up with the Christian God, I’m assuming.

I was asking what tribe is this, whose god seems to be not only self-aware, but also apparently egotistical?

The name of the precise god? Not sure I could pronouce it, nor, familiar with much of the mythology. My friend lived with some people called Maori, for a time. Try googling Polynesian beliefs/ religions if you’re truly interested or even if you’re just being petulent in defending your own beliefs.

 

[Ravemacneil]

Eat some cyanide instead of some bread, and then come back and tell us that they are the same substance

Same substance doesn’t mean same essence. It’s like telling me ice isn’t water and I should go hold my arm over steam to prove it’s not cold.

Respectfully,
RMN

 

[rvilbig]

. In vivo, gametes display errors in about 1in 40 million base pairs.

Also, I find it interesting that you think nature makes “errors.”

For if nature makes errors, then it has a purpose from which to deviate and hence err.

But if nature does not make errors, then it is perfect because it does not make mistakes.

Which is it Alec: does nature have purpose or does it possess perfection? Neither option is compatible with atheism.

-Ryan Vilbig
ryan.vilbig@gmail.com

 

[rvilbig]

both Aristotle and Aquinas believed in eternal essence and the fundamental immutability of species

Alec, I’m not sure where you’re getting your information, but I’d start reading original sources if I were you. This is right from the Summa Theologica:

“Since the generation of one thing is the corruption of another, it was not incompatible with the first formation of things, that from the corruption of the less perfect the more perfect should be generated. Hence animals generated from the corruption of inanimate things, or of plants, may have been generated then.” (Thomas Aquinas, STh I, q. 72, a. 1)

Aquinas says animals may have been “generated from the corruption of plants,” perhaps from genetic corruption, as he wrote elsewhere about the corruption of seed. Clearly species are mutable as “God continues to work until now” (cf. Jn 5:17).

By the way, I looked into your claim of a conflict between *Platonic *forms and evolution, and this idea seems to initiate with Louis Agassiz, who wrote that:

“All organized beings exhibit in themselves all those categories of structure and of existence upon which a natural system may be founded, in such a manner that, in tracing it, the human mind is only translating into human language the Divine thoughts expressed in nature in living realities. All these beings do not exist in consequence of the continued agency of physical causes, but have made their successive appearance upon earth by the immediate intervention of the Creator.” (Contributions to Natural History, page 135)

In response, Asa Gray pointed out that there need not be a conflict between forms and evolution: “uch " thoughts of the Creator " as these might have been actualized in the natural course of events.” (Article on Agassiz). Is this really that far fetched? For example, suppose I want to refill my glass of ice-water; I first have the thought in my mind; but to actualize that idea, I must actualize many other steps along the way, like getting out of my chair and walking to the refigerator. Nonetheless, it’s absurd to claim that my original thought didn’t exist. Make sense?

-Ryan Vilbig
ryan.vilbig@gmail.com

 

[hecd2]

TTo chime in the M-theory talk, we may say that strings are in a state of potency to the “form” fundamental particles, fundamental particles are in a state of potency to the “form” of subatomic particles, subatomic particles are in a state of potency to the “form” of atoms, atoms are in a state of potency to the “form” of molecules, and so forth. And do note that strings are truly prime matter as they are in an undifferentiated state of potency to both mass and location.

So what, even if it’s true? This doesn’t mean that we should abandon the notion that matter (in the scientific sense) can be distinctly differentiated - bread is NOT the same as flesh, and all the appeals to string theory won’t make it so.

Back to your so-called nominalist conception of species, the molecules of DNA and host defense are actualized to a certain degree, though they still admit potencies to other forms. This is why DNA may undergo tautomeric shifts and wobble pair, and why molecules may interfere in double slit experiments: they are still in a certain degree of potency.

I have no idea what your point is here (particularly your reference to the Young’s experiment). The fact that tautomeric shifts can cause base substitutions in replication is neither here nor there. As for the wobble rules, what on earth does the fact that multiple codons can code for the same residue have to do with anything we are talking about? You seem to be introducing random and irrelevant statements into the discussion.

Nonetheless, they also possess a certain degree of form. Do you agree that there is a universal definition for “DNA” and “monocyte”?

Would that be CD14++ monocytes or CD14+ CD16+ monocytes?

DNA exists, and you can look up a definition of it. We categorise molecules with a particular structure and those particular components as ‘DNA’, whether they are 5 base pairs long or 20,000 bp long, whether they are single or double strand, left-handed or right-handed . But it is we who choose to classify molecules that way - it is a name we give to a set of molecules which are in no way identical but which we lump together because of certain common or similar properties. Another case of nominalism at work.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

Also, I find it interesting that you think nature makes “errors.”

For if nature makes errors, then it has a purpose from which to deviate and hence err.

But if nature does not make errors, then it is perfect because it does not make mistakes.

Which is it Alec: does nature have purpose or does it possess perfection? Neither option is compatible with atheism.

False dichotomy. Neither - when we talk about copying errors we mean differences introduced into the daughter sequence with respect to the template of the parent sequence. That is all. It neither implies a perfect form from which to deviate, nor purpose.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[WmJackP]

I have no idea what you are telling me above. Can you dumb it down for me?

What he said is really a meaningless affectation.

He seems to postulate that ideas are never based on evidence.Instead, he seems to be saying that when one has an idea, it must fit into one of the categories he lists. By “autochthunus”, for example, means that an idea can be spontaneous. In your case, however, the poster seems to be suggesting, that what you have is an “idea of reference”. “An idea of reference” is psychological concept describing the re-direction of attitudes or remarks aimed at one person back toward one’s own self. The poster, however, mis-uses the application of the term to suggest that you are projecting imagined difficulties upon other people.

If what he meant is that you are more or less inventing the causes for what you preceive as being experienced by another person, he could have said that without the painful word salad.

 

[grannymh]

So what, even if it’s true? This doesn’t mean that we should abandon the notion that matter (in the scientific sense) can be distinctly differentiated - bread is NOT the same as flesh, and all the appeals to string theory won’t make it so.

Of course bread is not the same as flesh. When I receive the Host, I recognize the physical signs of bread.

 

[LogisticsBranch]

What he said is really a meaningless affectation.

He seems to postulate that ideas are never based on evidence.Instead, he seems to be saying that when one has an idea, it must fit into one of the categories he lists. By “autochthunus”, for example, means that an idea can be spontaneous. In your case, however, the poster seems to be suggesting, that what you have is an “idea of reference”. “An idea of reference” is psychological concept describing the re-direction of attitudes or remarks aimed at one person back toward one’s own self. The poster, however, mis-uses the application of the term to suggest that you are projecting imagined difficulties upon other people.

If what he meant is that you are more or less inventing the causes for what you preceive as being experienced by another person, he could have said that without the painful word salad.

You’re observations are incorrect WmJackP! First off, I am a she. 100% woman from top to bottem. Also, I did use the medical dictionary for the usage of the word idea. ( I do have a background in the medical field plus . . . .) I hope you and Leela will enjoy it.

medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Ideas
ref. # 155, 165, and 169

 

[NaturalEnquirer]

Well, how about this. Jesus is 100% divine. Jesus is 100% human.

I don’t have enough time to keep up with forum discussions these days. By the time I check back in, there are pages of replies. I apologize for the delay, and I hope no one has replied to this in the intervening pages (which I don’t have time to read right now).

This was discussed recently in the comments of Jimmy Akin’s blog, here: jimmyakin.org/2010/03/theological-connections-ii-the-foundation-stone.html

The upshot is this: "When orthodox Christians say that Jesus is fully human and fully divine, we do not mean that the entirety of his being is human, and also the entirety of his being is divine. That would be a simple contradiction. Jesus’ humanity is not divinity, and his divinity is not humanity.

What we are saying is that there is such a thing as divine nature, and Jesus has that in its entirety; and also there is such a thing as human nature, and Jesus has that in its entirety as well."

Have a nice day!

 

[WmJackP]

You’re observations are incorrect WmJackP! First off, I am a she. 100% woman from top to bottem. Also, I did use the medical dictionary for the usage of the word idea. ( I do have a background in the medical field plus . . . .) I hope you and Leela will enjoy it.

medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Ideas
ref. # 155, 165, and 169

Whoops! sorry. I should know, you gals are always right. It’s us guys who get it wrong.

 

[Roy5]

Recently I saw a CARA Catholic Poll which indicated that 43% of Catholics believe that the communion bread and wine only are symbols, that Christ is not present in them. I thought this was interesting.

 The rest, about 57%, believe in the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. That's a bit vague, as most Protestants I know believe that Christ is present everywhere. "Lo, I am with you always...." Some Protestants, Episcopalians and Lutherans for example, reject transubstantiation but accept the view that Christ is some special way in/around the communion elements.


  This poll suggests that millions of US Catholics - even among regular mass-attenders -cannot bring themselves to honestly accept the dogma of transubstantiation. They seem to have a typical Protestant view of communion? Does this mean that they have excommunicated themselvs from the church? Should they stop taking communion? Leave the church? What do you recommend?