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tafan2
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Why be wary? Do you think it is a dangerous position to espouse?
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Wesrock
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As niceatheist said, we’re living in it and are it.
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buffalo
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I don’t think it dangerous, I think it is wrong and an incomplete view of ID. It also ignores the effects of the fall and the quantum effects of man’s free will decisions.
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tafan2
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I have no idea what you mean by quantum effects of man’s free will decisions.
Why is it an incomplete view, and why does it ignore the fall?
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niceatheist
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People tend to throw the word “quantum” around with great abandon, with virtually no understanding of what it means. This sounds a lot like Deepak Chopra’s spiritual nonsense. It has nothing to do with physics, that is for certain.buffalo:
I have no idea what you mean by quantum effects of man’s free will decisions.
Why is it an incomplete view, and why does it ignore the fall?
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buffalo
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The observer does not collapse the waveform?
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Erikaspirit16
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I confess I’ve only skimmed through it, although I slowed down and read the more scientific parts. I have to say that anyone who cites Carleton Coon in 2011 goes down several notches in my opinion of them. And Wolpoff? “Wolpoff” is how you spell “outlier”…
In any case, monogenesis is given short shrift in the scientific part, and much of the paper is taken up with religious thought–nice, but irrelevant to science.
Now I’m not taking the time to look things up, so if someone wants to quibble with my facts, knock yourself out. But to my knowledge, Homo Sapiens originated about 200,000 years ago. Sometime around 50-60,000 years ago, one group left Africa; other groups settled in Palestine 10-20,000 years earlier, and probably some isolated wanderers went a lot further–but died out. So if we’re looking for an “Adam,” you need to look somewhere around that time (before man left Africa) or earlier. There is a theory that there was a bottleneck c. 70,000 years ago, and perhaps there were only 10,000 people at that time.
The article cited talks about shifts in groups of creatures from one species to another needing multiple mutations, etc., but the citations are from scientists whose best days were in the 1950s. Ancient history (pun intended). What prevents “Adam” (for lack of a better name) having some mutation that changes him and his descendants in a completely new way. Not a new species (obviously–since Adam has to breed!), but a sub-group or haplogroup if you like. Physically the same, but mentally much more advanced.
Now let’s assume Adam has 10 children, half of whom live to adulthood and have children of their own. How long would it take to affect the entire population of humans, if, in fact, there were roughly 10,000 humans other than Adam running around. Assuming 25 years for a generation, let’s do the math: in 6 generations (5 to the sixth power)–a mere 150 years–Adam could have 15,625 descendants. And if there were only 10,000 contemporaries of Adam, it doesn’t stretch the imagination to think that within a reasonable length of time–a few hundred years–ALL humans may well have inherited Adam’s mutation. Just as we can theorize a mitochondrial Eve–she wasn’t the ONLY ancestor, but she would have been the common ancestor of everyone alive today.
Now there is a long list of major changes that happen 40-70,000 years ago. I can’t remember them all, but for one thing, Neanderthals disappear. Language appears; so do symbols and art; so does the idea of burial. And after millions–literally–of years a totally new tool kit of stone and bone arrow heads, spear heads, scrapers, etc. appear. And bows and arrows appear. And by about 40,000 BC you’ve got astonishing cave paintings. And all this migration all over the earth. And some put the domestication of dogs at 30-35,000 years ago. And on and on.
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Erikaspirit16
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As always, too long, so part 2–
My point is that SOMETHING happened during this relatively short period of 30-70,000 years ago. Now from a purely scientific point of view, you could argue there was some mutation. As as we now know, a single mutation in a key gene can affect all sorts of things. And from a theological point of view, you could speculate that God chose the instant of that mutation to give Adam a soul and make him the first “real” man in a theological sense. And he simply passed this down to his descendants.
My point is that SOMETHING happened during this relatively short period of 30-70,000 years ago. Now from a purely scientific point of view, you could argue there was some mutation. As as we now know, a single mutation in a key gene can affect all sorts of things. And from a theological point of view, you could speculate that God chose the instant of that mutation to give Adam a soul and make him the first “real” man in a theological sense. And he simply passed this down to his descendants.
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tafan2
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Yes, I was not quite honest in saying I had no idea. I believe @buffalo was alluding to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle as an argument for free will. This is an example ( IMO more than ID), of people of faith trying to apply science inaccurately to explain a philosophical/theological belief, ie free will. It is a losing game unless one is very, very knowledgable about the science at hand. I certainly am a believer in free will, but I do not need to use a theory from quantum mechanics to defend it.
I can first of all defend it based on our ordinary human experience. We all experience free will each and every time we make a decision. Secondly, I can explain it from the philosophical standpoint which is much more satisfactory for people of faith, and it does not contradict anything we know from science.
I can first of all defend it based on our ordinary human experience. We all experience free will each and every time we make a decision. Secondly, I can explain it from the philosophical standpoint which is much more satisfactory for people of faith, and it does not contradict anything we know from science.
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buffalo
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And you know that was not the intention of my post. I was opening up the fact due to the fall and man’s free will decisions God may intervene to make corrections. This is not the same as the TE’s who are anti-ID stating God was not good enough in His creative act and had to tinker to get it right.
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meltzerboy2
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Can you blame them for moving away from us at faster-than-light speeds?
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tafan2
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Sorry, I was simply speculating on your use of the term “quantum effects”. If I misunderstood that, could you please state what you mean by that particular phrase “quantum effects of free will decisions”?
As to God intervening due to the fall, certainly I believe that is the case. That having been said, the term “make corrections” is wrong. God had a plan throughout all eternity which accounted for man’s free will decisions. So He did not have to “make corrections”. Those “corrections” were part of His plan all along. Why would he have made a plan that He knew would fail?
This is the type of wording that seems to make God into a tinkerer.
What do you mean by “TE”, Thomistic evolutionists? I am that (or at least I find that the most satisfying explanation I have come across). I do not know for sure if I am anti-ID, as I do not understand it in detail enough to say. I certainly see out all creation is turning out exactly how God planned for it to turn out. I certainly don’t like the word “design”, I will admit that, when it comes to God. He is a creator, not a designer.
As to God intervening due to the fall, certainly I believe that is the case. That having been said, the term “make corrections” is wrong. God had a plan throughout all eternity which accounted for man’s free will decisions. So He did not have to “make corrections”. Those “corrections” were part of His plan all along. Why would he have made a plan that He knew would fail?
This is the type of wording that seems to make God into a tinkerer.
What do you mean by “TE”, Thomistic evolutionists? I am that (or at least I find that the most satisfying explanation I have come across). I do not know for sure if I am anti-ID, as I do not understand it in detail enough to say. I certainly see out all creation is turning out exactly how God planned for it to turn out. I certainly don’t like the word “design”, I will admit that, when it comes to God. He is a creator, not a designer.
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niceatheist
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In quantum mechanics, collapse of the wave function means when a particle transitions from superposition to a single state. That does not require a conscious observer, and what we observe is the product of the wave function collapse. We do not cause the transition from multiple eigenstates to a single eigenstate. A lot of hoodoo has been written about consciousness collapsing the wave function, but it betrays a deep misunderstanding of what the wave function means, and what eigenstates are. It is because QM, at its core, is a statistical science, so when it speaks of superposition, it is talking about a wave or particle existing in a number of possible states, and observation being able to isolate a single state. Obviously for the universe to actually work, wave function collapses happen every instant.
It’s best to think of the universe, at the most fundamental level, as a vast array of “fields” (like the electromagnetic field carried by photons, or the strong nuclear field with gluons as the force carrier). As such, at a fundamental level, the universe is more like a vast collection of soap bubbles, some bubbles being able to strongly influence other types of soap bubbles, some interacting only very weakly. You might think of collapse as a point at where field interaction is seen as “something happening”, whether that’s the decay of a particle leading to the emitting of a photon, an electron around an atom being excited to a higher energy state, and so forth.
So, to put it simple, our observation of a quantum system does not lead to a collapse of the wave function, all we are observing is the product of a wave function collapsing; of multiple eigenstates becoming a single eigenstate.
It’s best to think of the universe, at the most fundamental level, as a vast array of “fields” (like the electromagnetic field carried by photons, or the strong nuclear field with gluons as the force carrier). As such, at a fundamental level, the universe is more like a vast collection of soap bubbles, some bubbles being able to strongly influence other types of soap bubbles, some interacting only very weakly. You might think of collapse as a point at where field interaction is seen as “something happening”, whether that’s the decay of a particle leading to the emitting of a photon, an electron around an atom being excited to a higher energy state, and so forth.
So, to put it simple, our observation of a quantum system does not lead to a collapse of the wave function, all we are observing is the product of a wave function collapsing; of multiple eigenstates becoming a single eigenstate.
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buffalo
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Yes, we agree He is a Creator. He has a plan and purpose = designer.
(yes TE’s are theistic evo’s).
I like this:
IDvolution - God “breathed” the super language of DNA into the “kinds” in the creative act.
This accounts for the diversity of life we see. The core makeup shared by all living things have the necessary complex information built in that facilitates rapid and responsive adaptation of features and variation while being able to preserve the “kind” that they began as. Life has been created with the creativity built in ready to respond to triggering events.
Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on Earth have the same core, it is virtually certain that living organisms have been thought of AT ONCE by the One and the same Creator endowed with the super language we know as DNA that switched on the formation of the various kinds, the cattle, the swimming creatures, the flying creatures, etc… in a pristine harmonious state and superb adaptability and responsiveness to their environment for the purpose of populating the earth that became subject to the ravages of corruption by the sin of one man (deleterious mutations).
IDvolution considers the latest science and is consistent with the continuous teaching of the Church.
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tafan2
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I will have to consider that more closely. At first glance, it certainly seems open to an interpretation that would be consistent with Thomistic Evolution. Do you not agree?
Again, could you clarify what you mean by the phrase “quantum effects of man’s free will decisions” with particular attention to why the terms “quantum effects”.
Again, could you clarify what you mean by the phrase “quantum effects of man’s free will decisions” with particular attention to why the terms “quantum effects”.
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niceatheist
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So just to be clear here, the idea is that before the fall, only beneficial mutations took place? And beneficial to whom exactly? After all, a virus evolving some new and novel way to infect a host is certainly beneficial to the virus, but it sure isn’t very beneficial to the unlucky organism that gets infected.
It doesn’t strike me that this “idvolution” has anything to do with biological evolution as we understand it. It’s an attempt to bolt on some sort of theological premise itself based on a pretty shaky interpretation of the Bible, in the hopes of finding some sort of a literal reading that doesn’t end up looking absurd. But if it helps you accept evolution in any degree beyond the rather bizarre limits that most forms of Creationism impose, I suppose that’s an improvement, but it’s still anti-science, just less virulently so.
It doesn’t strike me that this “idvolution” has anything to do with biological evolution as we understand it. It’s an attempt to bolt on some sort of theological premise itself based on a pretty shaky interpretation of the Bible, in the hopes of finding some sort of a literal reading that doesn’t end up looking absurd. But if it helps you accept evolution in any degree beyond the rather bizarre limits that most forms of Creationism impose, I suppose that’s an improvement, but it’s still anti-science, just less virulently so.
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buffalo
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Paul Davies postulated that God operates in the pores of the universe. Cumulative negative quantum effects of free will decisions may deteriorate the universe and cause more chaotic effects. (quantum effects - the observer influences the outcome at a quantum level - an example is standing at the edge of a pond you influence whether the photons bounce off the surface or go to the bottom and what you see.)
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buffalo
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IDvolution is philosophy that uses science to support it.
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tafan2
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Ok, I do not know why we need that type of esoteric and complicated theory. I suppose one can believe it if one wants. But I see no reason to go any deeper into it.
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buffalo
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Catholicism and our understanding of the natural law informs us faith and reason cannot be opposed. Materialistic science has eliminated the final and formal causes from its investigation and limits itself to efficient and material causes. We Catholics want a more complete understanding. Catholicism is fully in support of science, properly conducted and reasoned of course.
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