Science & Religion

[rossum]

You are assuming:

1. All the couples were identical.

I am sure that St Anastasia is well enough versed in biology not to make this assumption. How do you think DNA testing works? Humans all have different DNA, so the couples in the population would have been different.

rossum

 

[Charlemagne_II]

ASimon

you have all your work ahead of you to show logically how and why this One Supreme Being created the entire Universe with you and me in mind.

And you have all your work ahead of you to show how the universe could not have been designed when you are designing the very argument against design.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

lui
**
To claim that those who do not believe in Christianity have a deep-seated craving to believe there is no God nor any specified Adam and Eve is extremely presumptuous and ridiculous.

I could make the same claim about people who believe in God. **

But I agree with you. We have a craving to know God. We believe this craving is planted in us by God.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

StAnastasia

**You can’t have it both ways, accepting the authority of genetic testing for diseases and paternity, but rejecting what genetics has to say about human evolutionary history. **

Your belief in the infallibility of science is touching!

 

[Charlemagne_II]

ASimon

That there is no God is not an assumption - it is a truth claim made based on the quality of the evidence presented for the opposite view.

But it is an assumption. An assumption is a position taken as true without proof. An atheist cannot say there is no God without making this an assumption, because there is no proof that there is no God.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

SGW

and since there is no reason to interpret the passage metaphorically except that modern science makes it absurd to do so, and since the rest of the Bible gives no reason to believe the passage was intended to be unhistorical, I believe the writer of Gen. 1 intended to present the creation account there as literal history**. **

A day would be counted as twenty-four hours, from sunrise to sunrise. But the sun was not created until the third “day”. How then could the writer intend the account to be taken literally as twenty-four hour days?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

SGW

**Nevertheless, it is not entirely by chance but by a rigid absolute order that it occurs. **

Did this **rigid absolute order **occur by chance?

 

[buffalo]

I assume that means you think this is a historical story.

Yes, Catholic tradition understands this as a historical narrative. The salient point in the commentary is that it was a miracle. Not hard to believe if one knows the Creator to be in charge of all His creation.

 

[buffalo]

Assumption 1 is false. Genetic differences can occur when a duplicate gene assumes a different function or when a maladaptive gene piggybacks on an adaptive gene transfer.

Assumption 2 is just as much a total fabrication as the existence of Adam and Eve to begin with. It could only be true if Eve was made out of Adam’s rib, which is scientifically absurd; and even then, for Eve to have daughters (Gen. 5:4), she would have to have the female chromosome to pass on. Since she didn’t get it from Adam, she must have gotten it elsewhere; at any rate, they would not be genetically identical.

Assumption 3: Not sure which ancestry you refer to here. Is it that Adam and Eve are the common ancestors of all humans, or that all life descended from a common ancestor?

Assumption 4: What’s your point?

You are in agreement with my post.

Mutation rate - the assumption is that human mutation rates are constant. We now know they are not.

The assumption they make is that all life shares common ancestry.

 

[buffalo]

Then Adam and Eve weren’t human. Humans have two copies of each allele. If Adam and Eve had more copies then they weren’t human. Humans are diploid. If Adam was tetraploid or more, then he wasn’t human.

rossum

I didn’t say they had more copies. I said they could have been more genetically diverse than assumed.

 

[Wardog]

We are descended from “Adam” and “Eve” and the other 3,000 - 10,000 breeding couples alive at the time. We are not descended solely from one couple named “Adam” and “Eve.”

Do you believe the Human Genome Project has determined that we are all descended from a single female 140,000 years ago?

<<DNA studies indicate that all modern humans share a common female ancestor who lived in Africa about 140,000 years ago, and all men share a common male ancestor who lived in Africa about 60,000 years ago. These were not the only humans who lived in these eras, and the human genome still contains many genetic traits of their contemporaries. Humanity’s most recent common ancestors are identifiable because their lineages have survived by chance in the special pieces of DNA that are passed down the gender lines nearly unaltered from one generation to the next. These ancestors are part of a growing body of fossil and DNA evidence indicating that modern humans arose in sub-Saharan Africa and began migrating, starting about 65,000 years ago, to populate first southern Asia, China, Java, and later Europe. Each of us living today has DNA that contains the story of our ancient ancestors’ journeys.>>

Apparently, there were contemporaries; but we are all descended from a single female. Why could this not be true of Adam and Eve?

 

[Lui]

Yes, Catholic tradition understands this as a historical narrative. The salient point in the commentary is that it was a miracle. Not hard to believe if one knows the Creator to be in charge of all His creation.

I know that it is based on a miracle if you believe this as actual history but it would be wrong to say all Catholics believe this. The majority of European Catholics believe in evolution and don’t take every story of the Bible literally. In the US many Catholics are influenced by Evangelicals who believe in a young earth and a complete literal interpretation of the Bible.

 

[rossum]

I didn’t say they had more copies. I said they could have been more genetically diverse than assumed.

Then explain precisely what you mean by “more genetically diverse”. Did they have the same amount of DNA as the rest of us? Did their DNA code for more proteins than the rest of us? What were the differences between their DNA and our DNA?

Remember, too large a difference and they would not have been human.

rossum

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Lui

In the US many Catholics are influenced by Evangelicals who believe in a young earth and a complete literal interpretation of the Bible.

This is not quite true. To give just one example, the Evangelicals do not accept a literal interpretation of the Last Supper (The Catholic Eucharist).

Had you said a “complete literal interpretation of Genesis,” you would have been closer to the truth. I assume that’s what you meant to say.

 

[Lui]

Lui

In the US many Catholics are influenced by Evangelicals who believe in a young earth and a complete literal interpretation of the Bible.

This is not quite true. To give just one example, the Evangelicals do not accept a literal interpretation of the Last Supper (The Catholic Eucharist).

Had you said a “complete literal interpretation of Genesis,” you would have been closer to the truth. I assume that’s what you meant to say.

Well, the story of Jonah is not from Genesis as far as I know, and I don’t think that many European Catholics actually take the story of Jonah surviving in a fish belly as a historical story.

 

[buffalo]

Then explain precisely what you mean by “more genetically diverse”. Did they have the same amount of DNA as the rest of us? Did their DNA code for more proteins than the rest of us? What were the differences between their DNA and our DNA?

Remember, too large a difference and they would not have been human.

rossum

Velly velly velly intelesting question… I wonder if it would be within the margin of error…

It will be interesting to know what diversity parameters we need to back into Adam and Eve. I will see if I can find something - (from those simulation models.)

 

[buffalo]

Well, the story of Jonah is not from Genesis as far as I know, and I don’t think that many European Catholics actually take the story of Jonah surviving in a fish belly as a historical story.

It has always been understood to be historical by Catholics. It would have been interesting to see the results of the Scopes trial had Catholic teaching been involved.

There are many disbelieving Catholics who have lost their faith and subscribed to scientism. This does not mean it to be false, simply secularism has taken hold.

It is beyond me how a Catholic can credit God with creation, but limit His ability to work within it. Me thinks it is bad logic.

 

[rossum]

It is beyond me how a Catholic can credit God with creation, but limit His ability to work within it. Me thinks it is bad logic.

It requires that God not be deceptive. If God’s creation contains 1,500,000 annual layers at the bottom of Lake Baikal, then we can be sure that God allows them to exist to show that Lake Baikal has been there for at least 1,500,000 years. Otherwise, God would be deceptive, and I do not think that the Catholic God is generally seen as deceptive.

Is it bad logic to believe that God is not deceptive?

rossum

 

[buffalo]

It requires that God not be deceptive. If God’s creation contains 1,500,000 annual layers at the bottom of Lake Baikal, then we can be sure that God allows them to exist to show that Lake Baikal has been there for at least 1,500,000 years. Otherwise, God would be deceptive, and I do not think that the Catholic God is generally seen as deceptive.

Is it bad logic to believe that God is not deceptive?

rossum

No - it is excellent logic. God cannot deceive or be deceived.

However, God is under no constraint to reveal all to humans. Remember my beach scene…?

If one is walking down the beach and sees left footprints as far as one can see, should the conclusion be a deceiver is at work?

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSsdMJO6jvCQKwDYJmlXTRGiLlDlWlHtx7Hk67kVs6Gt-EPxFANc6yq5UXu

https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/i...kGvd3aIgyEUGaxUMKHNMoo0qyUwEqpIuB70QQfG38EfBg

 

[ASimon]

ASimon

That there is no God is not an assumption - it is a truth claim made based on the quality of the evidence presented for the opposite view.

But it is an assumption. An assumption is a position taken as true without proof. An atheist cannot say there is no God without making this an assumption, because there is no proof that there is no God.

Nope, still not an assumption. An assumption is the philosophical bedrock on which a hypothesis is formed. “There is (or probably is) no God” is not the opening move in my argument - it’s the conclusion itself. The assumption would be along the lines of “When there’s nothing to be seen, felt, or in any way tested for, it’s silly to go on presuming that there’s something there regardless.”

And to repeat the real point - even if I were to concede that atheism is an assumption (I don’t), that’s one versus the waterfall of assumptions that theism must assert to square itself with reality.

Finally, this…

And you have all your work ahead of you to show how the universe could not have been designed when you are designing the very argument against design.

is basically incoherent. The Universe must have been designed because I’m capable of articulating an argument that it might not have been? If you say so.