Science & Religion

[Charlemagne_II]

SGW
**
But the short answer is that natural selection is a rigid ordered system that exists by the necessity living creatures have to survive and reproduce. It is possible, despite your theology, for order to exist without any supernatural being to do the ordering.**

Your answer is altogether too short. It’s not even an answer. I’ll ask the question again?

Why is there this particular “rigid ordered system” as you call it, rather than some other rigid ordered system. Why do living creatures need to survive? Why did abiogenesis build into the original living organism the capacity to reproduce itself?

You have no answers for these questions. Stop pretending that evolution answers them all. And stop pretending you are the only one who knows anything about evolution in this thread.

So a “true belief” can be based on a mere possibility? So because science cannot exclude the possibility that invisible leprechauns infest your basement, you are perfectly reasonable if you dig it up looking for pots of gold? And you claim to stand for common sense?

Even scientists constantly hypothesize the possibility of things they cannot prove, such as the existence of other universes, for which there is no one scrap of evidence.
**

Science does not have to account for every minute of every day to dismiss the possibility of a single pair of individuals being the sole parents of the human race. All it has to do is show from the current evidence that this is impossible, as rossum said in post 996.**

Science only has to account for what it can prove, otherwise it is science fiction. You cannot prove there were not two original parents of the human race, just as you cannot prove that the first living cell was never the first living cell but merely one of thousands that appeared simultaneously on the earth.

 

[SGWessells]

You have unwittingly hit the nail on the head! It is impossible to find out from fossils anything about the precise number of our ancestors but that’s not the real issue. It is an undeniable historical fact that a person must have grasped** for the first time** that what he intended to do was wrong - and went ahead nevertheless**.**

There must have been an **original sin **-unless one denies the reality of good and evil altogether.We can only speculate as to its naturebut it must have beenvery serious, i.e. a mortal sin. Otherwise it would not have occurred to some one who had been amoral until that moment. It was probably an act of murder given the savage environment. It is also probable that the killer was a man but a woman was also involved because they would not have lived alone. At all events there is no doubt whatsoever that the bloodstained record and **guilt **of humanity had a beginning in time and space. That is not a gratuitous theological belief but a rational philsophical conclusion based on inexorable logic…

At least we’ve moved away from the Adam and Eve legend where God only told them not to eat a fruit (O, the horror of fruit eating!) to speculation about the general rise of conscience. That’s progress, Tony; good for you. Unfortunately, your logic has yet to prove that this happened in only one person, who would not ever have died if he had not disobeyed it, or that the feeling of guilt came from God, not some other source.

 

[You]

Darwin said “exclusive”. That means for the exclusive good of the ants, with no good for the tree. Since both the ants and the tree gain from the arrangement, the good is not “exclusive” to the ants, so it does not meet Darwin’s criterion. Both sides gain in a mutually beneficial arrangement.

rossum

Are you sure thats what Darwin meant by exclusive, because I read it as saying that the tree does something for the exclusive good of another species, as opposed to something not directed at any particular species or at any species at all. Something is done exclusively for another species.

 

[SGWessells]

Charlemagne II: “How is it that the metaphor in Genesis predates the science by 3,000 years?”

How is it scientific to assert that the earth was created three days before the stars? Saying that Genesis anticipated science because out of fifty assertions about the nature and development of the universe it happened to get one right is absurd. Are you saying that the author of Genesis wrote “let there be light” because he knew scientifically about the big bang and the early universe? If so, why did he get everything else wrong? If not, then Genesis did not anticipate science at all, but hit on one right thing out of coincidence. So please stop posting that quote from Sagan as if it proved anything about the Bible. It doesn’t, and Sagan himself would have been the first to laugh at any claim that it did.

 

[rossum]

Are you sure thats what Darwin meant by exclusive

Yes. It is easy to see how a mutually beneficial arrangement can evolve, as it has done many times. There is even a name for it: symbiosis.

An arrangement that benefits exclusively one side can only arise if the organism getting the benefit is driving it, parasitism.

Darwin is saying that reverse-parasitism cannot evolve. Both parasitism and symbiosis can evolve.

rossum

 

[SGWessells]

You can imagine, if you (God) had a puppy (human) and all the puppy (human) wanted to do was eat (self-satisfaction); but at the same time, you understand that the puppy (human) cannot control its eating habit and that it eats more than it should (constant need for self satisfaction), what do you do?

If you are a mere human being, you do as your post suggested. If you are the all-powerful, all-foreseeing God, you know in advance that if you don’t want a puppy that cannot control its appetite, you can make a puppy that can. But if you give the puppy that flawed nature, you are stuck with training it, even if you are God. You can’t blame the puppy; you made it that way. Or you can make a puppy that could eat from the neighbor’s trash can, but won’t. Nothing is impossible for God, right?
But we dismiss that possibility for human nature because our experience shows that we all choose evil at one time or another. We are stuck with that fact, and it is confirmed by our experience every day. But we are not stuck with the belief in a God who is both all-powerful and loving, for many don’t believe in such a god, although everyone knows that evil exists. So you have to find some way to make the definition of God you have chosen to believe in fit the facts of experience. There is an interesting discussion of this on the list about “the problem with the problem of evil”. Personally, I have not found any of the suggested ways of reconciling this problem convincing yet.

 

[StAnastasia]

It is a core doctrine of the Church that (human) souls did not and do not evolve. To state anything else would be a pretty fundamental heresy. So regardless of how it happened, there had to have been a defining moment in which this uniquely human being began the procreation of the rest of the human race.

Elizabeth, why is the human “soul” any less special or marvelous if God called it into existence through the divinely created process of evolution? Why is the “soul” more special if God magically “poofed” it into existence 70,000 years ago? Aren’t humans pretty special no matter how God did it?

 

[SGWessells]

Tonyrey: How do you explain the urge to survive?"

Instinct. It’s as clear an explanation as “God geve it to us.” Clearer, in fact, because instinct can be observed.

If design is only an appearance then intelligence is also only an appearance!

That does seem to be true of some people at least.

How would you prove that colours are essential for survival?

I never said “essential.” They can be useful, though, for example in a species of Colobus monkeys in the Ugandan rain forest evolved the ability to distinguish the red color of leaves when they are at their most nutritious stage of development. (See Sean Carroll, The Making of the Fittest, ch. 4). The chimpanzees on the forest floor go for he yellow fruits which are part of their diet. Insects see into the ultraviolet range, which we do not, so that a flower which appears to us as solid yellow looks to the honeybee like a star pattern radiating out from its center like a guidance system leading them to where the pollen is (and incidentally propagating the flower species as well).

How were membranes transformed into feathers?

The membranes of flying squirrels weren’t, of course, but similar membranes in the ancestors of birds would perform the same useful function. They would be transformed into feathers by random mutation operating under natural selection for millions of years, same as every other morphological feature. There are several fossils of intermediate species illustrating this process, including the famous archaeopteryx.

 

[Elizabeth502]

Elizabeth, why is the human “soul” any less special or marvelous if God called it into existence through the divinely created process of evolution? Why is the “soul” more special if God magically “poofed” it into existence 70,000 years ago? Aren’t humans pretty special no matter how God did it?

Well you can characterize God’s unique relationship with mankind with the dismissive term “magic,” if you wish, but I do not describe God’s indwelling, and how that factors into the economy of creation and salvation, with such intellectually compromised words and concepts.

Further, either you fail to understand this one aspect of Church doctrine, or you oppose it: It is not just mankind (“humans”) that are “pretty special,” it is you, and I, and each person individually who is not just “special” but unique. No matter how much you share characteristics with anyone else in your gene pool – and regardless of whether your body could be cloned, “you” cannot be cloned. You are irreplaceable. “You” did more than evolve. You were touched, chosen, blessed as an individual, not just as a woman or as one who borrowed blessings as “a member of mankind.” Mankind, yes, is blessed. But the blessings extend to individuals singularly, not by or through evolution.

 

[SGWessells]

Quote:
Originally Posted by SGWessells
The only refuge anyone with any pretensions to rationality has is to call Genesis metaphorical. But that your church forbids you to do.

Tonyrey: “You are misinformed”

“According to a decision of the Biblical Commission in 1909, the literal historical sense [of Genesis 1-3] is not to be doubted in regard to the following facts:
a) That the first man received a command from God in order to test his obedience;
b) That through the temptation of the devil in the form of a serpent, he transgressed the divine commandment;
c) That our first parents were shut out from the original condition of innocence…
The mythological explanation, and the purely allegorical explanation (of the Alexandrines) are to be rejected” Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 1952, p. 104-5.

Are those decisions no longer in force? Have they become yet another teaching the church has changed, like religious liberty and the ban on ecumenism?

It is true, however, that the Church says the word “day” need not be interpreted as a literal 24 hour period, so you’re off the hook there. I should have said “your church forbids you to do in regard to certain doctrines which science finds as impossible as the others.”

 

[SGWessells]

Every week in the media there are news items which give the impression that **all **human thoughts, beliefs, emotions and decisions can be explained in terms of brain activity. Such is the “intellectual” environment in which we live…

Wow, I should check out the media more often. I had no idea that the culture was becoming so sensible.

 

[epiphany08]

If you are a mere human being, you do as your post suggested. If you are the all-powerful, all-foreseeing God, you know in advance that if you don’t want a puppy that cannot control its appetite, you can make a puppy that can. But if you give the puppy that flawed nature, you are stuck with training it, even if you are God. You can’t blame the puppy; you made it that way. Or you can make a puppy that could eat from the neighbor’s trash can, but won’t. Nothing is impossible for God, right?
But we dismiss that possibility for human nature because our experience shows that we all choose evil at one time or another. We are stuck with that fact, and it is confirmed by our experience every day. But we are not stuck with the belief in a God who is both all-powerful and loving, for many don’t believe in such a god, although everyone knows that evil exists. So you have to find some way to make the definition of God you have chosen to believe in fit the facts of experience. There is an interesting discussion of this on the list about “the problem with the problem of evil”. Personally, I have not found any of the suggested ways of reconciling this problem convincing yet.

The point you raised shows that you have put thought into the situation; however, you fail to understand one critical factor. Perfection is not what God is after. If everyone was perfect, there would be only 1 suitable action for everything.

First, let us define perfection. “Without flaw”. Now let us look into the idea of love.

Let me ask you a question, do you love your spouse for her perfection? Or for her imperfections? Does this apply the same with your children? This is another subject entirely that deserves its own thread but there is relevance to my point.

A perfect world is often hoped for but probably not what you would imagine. I believe it would be no different then living in a robotic world, or that movie Pleasantville. It’s not as great as it seems.

Do not be mistaken, God has the power to change us and make us perfect. Yet he has rather designed an environment, natural world, for us to live and develop on our own. Free will really is an important element in this. A ignorant parent might lock us up in our rooms to shield us from danger all our lives, but what does that do to us? A understanding parent may allow us to do what we want, with certain restrictions. God, allows us the decision to choose to do whatever we so desire, though he has laid out the foundations for us through conscience. Even when we are wrong and make mistakes, God will not force us to change, rather he will confront us with experiences to make us want to change. Again, the emphasis is on free will.I believe God is the epitome of a good parent.

Your second paragraph has a good point. Many people acknowledge evil, but not many people acknowledge God. The blame is on society and how we developed. If you look at history, in the olden days, people put faith in God for things beyond our control. When crops were getting dry, we prayed. This form of prayer may be different for different cultures but the purpose is the same, a communication to God. Soon what happened, is that people started learning more about the environment and becoming arrogant. With the development of different fields of Science, Psychology, and other forms of study that deal with humans and the environment, we begin to believe we understand it all. What is more convincing to you, something you touch and see with your eyes, or something you feel and understand with your heart? Well, most people opted for the first option. Mass media also doesn’t help, when used in a good way it becomes a tool to aid moral development. However, public media often construes the truth and what the viewers receive from it is a distorted message of reality. Too much emphasis is placed on materiality and you can’t blame the people for that, you blame society and the competitive nature of it. This was not the case before, its something that developed as society developed. I’d love to look into this but I generally don’t have too much time these days.

 

[You]

Yes. It is easy to see how a mutually beneficial arrangement can evolve, as it has done many times. There is even a name for it: symbiosis.

An arrangement that benefits exclusively one side can only arise if the organism getting the benefit is driving it, parasitism.

Darwin is saying that reverse-parasitism cannot evolve. Both parasitism and symbiosis can evolve.

rossum

“…reverse-parasitism cannot evolve”. Like people feeding the ducks, or building a house for a wild animal. That cannot evolve. It is one species doing something exclusively for the good of another species.

 

[epiphany08]

Quote:
Originally Posted by SGWessells
The only refuge anyone with any pretensions to rationality has is to call Genesis metaphorical. But that your church forbids you to do.

Tonyrey: “You are misinformed”

“According to a decision of the Biblical Commission in 1909, the literal historical sense [of Genesis 1-3] is not to be doubted in regard to the following facts:
a) That the first man received a command from God in order to test his obedience;
b) That through the temptation of the devil in the form of a serpent, he transgressed the divine commandment;
c) That our first parents were shut out from the original condition of innocence…
The mythological explanation, and the purely allegorical explanation (of the Alexandrines) are to be rejected” Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 1952, p. 104-5.

Are those decisions no longer in force? Have they become yet another teaching the church has changed, like religious liberty and the ban on ecumenism?

It is true, however, that the Church says the word “day” need not be interpreted as a literal 24 hour period, so you’re off the hook there. I should have said “your church forbids you to do in regard to certain doctrines which science finds as impossible as the others.”

The Bible is a profound document given unto us for us to interpret. Every sentence within it has different meanings for different people who reads it. Personally, me reading a sentence of the Bible 3 years ago, I had one message while now if I read the same sentence, I’d have another message. That’s the unspoken beauty of it.

Whether it is fact or metaphorical is up for each readers interpretation at the time of the knowledge he possesses about this world. Generally, I’m referring to worldly knowledge, not only knowledge of science or knowledge of spirituality.

Let me provide you an example: (Completely speculative)
If God was to document something now for future mankind to understand. Do you think he would give specific details about everything? Or only that which matters?
Take the Nazi regime for instance. Jewish people were Gods chosen people. But maybe they made God mad for some reason, or maybe God wanted to make them better. So he allowed the subsequent events to occur arriving at the Holocaust. If this was true and God wished to document it for his people in the future. Would he say:
“I put Hitler in power to try and execute genocide on the Jewish population in the European countries in which they reside.”
Or rather;
“My chosen people have disappointed me and I will test them with the gravest threats to cause them to turn to me once again and thrive.”

Which sentence do you think has more impact on the future readers of this document? Like I said, unfortunately, people today are generally very arrogant when it comes to their rational mind and how they discern information. We should all be looking for the truth but majority of us rely on fact. Whats the difference you might ask. Modern definition of fact has a bearing in either Law or Science in which both case it depends upon some sort of physical proof. There are many things that are indeed the truth of this world but when you look for the evidence to support your fact, your not going to find it.

 

[SGWessells]

Why is there this particular “rigid ordered system” as you call it, rather than some other rigid ordered system. Why do living creatures need to survive? Why did abiogenesis build into the original living organism the capacity to reproduce itself?

Because it’s the one that happened to evolve.
Living creatures only need to survive until they die. But self-preservation seems to be instinctive in living creatures. Animals without it aren’t around for us to observe their behavior.
Because it could
Scientists are still working out the details of course :hammering:

You have no answers for these questions. Stop pretending that evolution answers them all. And stop pretending you are the only one who knows anything about evolution in this thread.

I don’t pretend that. Both rossum and StAnastasia know lots more than I do. However, I know a lot more than some people posting here, judging from the comments they make. That’s why I try to avoid sniping comments (hard as that is at times) and try to teach people something, as others have taught me.
Nor do I pretend that evolution answers all questions. It has no idea who will win the Super Bowl, for instance But you need to stop pretending that just because you have no answers to questions except God’s inscrutable ways, nobody else does either.

Even scientists constantly hypothesize the possibility of things they cannot prove, such as the existence of other universes, for which there is no one scrap of evidence.

Not yet.:hammering:

Science only has to account for what it can prove, otherwise it is science fiction. You cannot prove there were not two original parents of the human race, just as you cannot prove that the first living cell was never the first living cell but merely one of thousands that appeared simultaneously on the earth.

How many times do I have to say this? We have to judge according to what the best evidence is. There are millions of things the existence of which you cannot prove, yet you have no hesitation, and feel no humility, in rejecting them nevertheless. Yet you blame us for doing the same thing, as if it were some failure of reason. Physician, heal thyself. :tsktsk:

 

[Lui]

Elizabeth, why is the human “soul” any less special or marvelous if God called it into existence through the divinely created process of evolution? Why is the “soul” more special if God magically “poofed” it into existence 70,000 years ago? Aren’t humans pretty special no matter how God did it?

Is 70000 years ago the time frame when people who believe in “our first parents” think God magically “created” Adam? I thought most people think it was a bout 6000-10000 years ago.

Doesn’t the Bible say Cain built a city called Enoch? Were there cities 70000 years ago?
Also where in Genesis does it say that the wife of Cain was the daughter of Adam and Eve?
Whose daughters were Adah and Zillah who both married Lamech?? I’m confused

Seriously, I don’t get how anyone can take this as real history…

 

[SGWessells]

If you look at history, in the olden days, people put faith in God for things beyond our control. When crops were getting dry, we prayed. This form of prayer may be different for different cultures but the purpose is the same, a communication to God. Soon what happened, is that people started learning more about the environment and becoming arrogant.

And when “we” prayed, what happened? Either it rained, or it didn’t. When it rained, the gods got the credit, even though it may also have rained on the fields of the village over the hill, where nobody prayed; so it would have rained whether we prayed or not.
If it doesn’t rain, that didn’t ever in a single instance mean that prayer was considered useless. Instead, we invented reasons: the gods were angry, which meant that animals, children, or the mean old woman down the road, who had obviously put a curse on us, were sacrificed. After that, same as above.
When people learned about the environment, they also invented irrigation, which made farming manageable, more widespread, and fed a lot more people than prayer ever did. I think that result could excuse a little arrogance (presuming we are justified in the assumption that there was any; and what about the arrogance of the local shaman, shaking his rattle and shrieking his prayers and accepting the payment and gratitude, and enjoying the fear, of the villagers even though all his tricks and mumbo-jumbo had absolutely no effect?

With the development of different fields of Science, Psychology, and other forms of study that deal with humans and the environment, we begin to believe we understand it all. What is more convincing to you, something you touch and see with your eyes, or something you feel and understand with your heart? Well, most people opted for the first option.

The problem with understanding with your heart is that nobody’s heart has any sense, or ability to discern what is likely from what is merely liked. My mother feels and understands from her heart that aliens from a distant galaxy dwell among us, guiding us to the next level of spiritual enlightenment which will result in an age of peace, love, and rock n’ roll for everyone. No amount of reasoning can convince her that this is a pathetic delusion. I have known people whose heart told them that they could channel power into an earring to deflect the influence of God on their soul. I’m not making this up. That’s what relying on the heart, without guidance from the intellect, will lead you. I don’t think that’s an improvement.
Ideally, of course, we should have both; but each in its proper sphere; the heart for feeling and loving, the intellect for understanding and guiding the heart to love’s proper object.

 

[SGWessells]

Take the Nazi regime for instance. Jewish people were Gods chosen people. But maybe they made God mad for some reason, or maybe God wanted to make them better. So he allowed the subsequent events to occur arriving at the Holocaust. If this was true and God wished to document it for his people in the future. Would he say:
“I put Hitler in power to try and execute genocide on the Jewish population in the European countries in which they reside.”
Or rather;
“My chosen people have disappointed me and I will test them with the gravest threats to cause them to turn to me once again and thrive.”

So when the Nazis took pregnant women and used them for vivisection, or threw* living *children into the fires of the crematorium, or picked particular prisoners to load those too weak to stagger by their own power to the gas chambers to carry them there in wheelbarrows, knowing that it may well be their turn tomorrow? Or forced to throw still living victims into the flames; and systematically starved, murdered, tortured, and brutalized God’s own people, the apple of his eye, he did it so they would LOVE him? Can a sane person really mean this?
And how’d that work out for him? Ever read holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel’s book “Night”, about how his experience taught him that a god couldn’t possible exist? I’m sure he wasn’t the only one led to that conclusion.

There are many things that are indeed the truth of this world but when you look for the evidence to support your fact, your not going to find it.

There are a lot more things believed in this world that are false, and have no evidence to support them. Without evidence based on reason and empirical testing, how are you going to tell the difference? The way most people will do it is by going with what they feel best believing – a notoriously unreliable and dangerous method. Why dangerous? Because when their pet beliefs are threatened, especially by a more reasonable fact, they have no rational defense, and so resort to distortion, misrepresentation, character assassination, and at the last resort, force. Examples abound, especially in religious conflict, because the emotions are so intense and the need for reassurance so deep.

 

[SGWessells]

Is 70000 years ago the time frame when people who believe in “our first parents” think God magically “created” Adam? I thought most people think it was a bout 6000-10000 years ago.

Doesn’t the Bible say Cain built a city called Enoch? Were there cities 70000 years ago?
Also where in Genesis does it say that the wife of Cain was the daughter of Adam and Eve?
Whose daughters were Adah and Zillah who both married Lamech?? I’m confused

Seriously, I don’t get how anyone can take this as real history…

Me neither, Lui. But if we are all descendants of Adam and Eve, then Cain had to have married his sister. Or maybe a niece. God wasn’t so strict about incest in those days. So much for unchanging morality.

 

[Lui]

Me neither, Lui. But if we are all descendants of Adam and Eve, then Cain had to have married his sister. Or maybe a niece. God wasn’t so strict about incest in those days. So much for unchanging morality.

I’ve already once been explained that the genes of Adam and Eve were so perfect that incest made sense(speaking about sense in the whole Adam and Eve theory is ironic already) as gross as it may seem. The thing is it says no where in Genesis that all these women that showed up to marry the sons were their sisters.
The story is so badly written that people just have to guess what happened.