Scientists Unveil Missing Link In Evolution

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I said nothing about the molecule DNA. I said God created the language of DNA.
So, God created the language of DNA, but not the molecule which transmits the language? God was sitting helplessly by waiting, waiting for THE big moment when such a ridiculously improbable molecule formed, THEN He infused his language into it at that moment? Wondering, Rob :confused:
 
I said nothing about the molecule DNA. I said God created the language of DNA.
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So, God created the language of DNA, but not the molecule which transmits the language? God was sitting helplessly by waiting, waiting for THE big moment when such a ridiculously improbable molecule formed, THEN He infused his language into it at that moment? Wondering, Rob :confused:
It seems they would both go hand in hand wouldn’t it?
 
Also, your argument that scientists if scientists don’t know what’s going on, they call something “random,” is just false. “Random” is a technical term that is mathematically provable.
This is where you are dead wrong. In mathematics there is no such thing as a pure random number. You may have pseudo-random algorithms, but these have to work with a seed which is not random.
 
I said nothing about the molecule DNA. I said God created the language of DNA.
Code:
So, God created the language of DNA, but not the molecule which transmits the language? God was sitting helplessly by waiting, waiting for THE big moment when such a ridiculously improbable molecule formed, THEN He infused his language into it at that moment? Wondering, Rob :confused:
No, God created the rules of chemistry and physics, knowing they would result in DNA and life.
 
Much variation IS random, and that is a verifiable fact.
I believe we are at the core of the issue. Scientists can observe randomness in nature because they can’t see exactly what’s feeding in these changes. However, whether the thing is truly random is yet to be verified. My view is God would never let something happen by chance. He is in total control. So there must be something else, some design perhaps, that is causing these changes.
 
This is where you are dead wrong. In mathematics there is no such thing as a pure random number. You may have pseudo-random algorithms, but these have to work with a seed which is not random.
“Random” is not a number. It’s a distribution. It’s an observed distribution that approaches Normal.
 
I believe we are at the core of the issue. Scientists can observe randomness in nature because they can’t see exactly what’s feeding in these changes. However, whether the thing is truly random is yet to be verified. My view is God would never let something happen by chance. He is in total control. So there must be something else, some design perhaps, that is causing these changes.
This isn’t much of an issue to me. I don’t see a problem with God creating a self-organizing system that uses random events to produce outcomes that He wants. He designed it all with foreknowledge, anyway.

I think there is danger in saying that He actively directs seemingly random occurrences, however. Danger both in the possibility that we’re talking about a God who makes something look random when it is not, and in the possibility that we’re making God guilty of making errors along the way to a defined goal.

I think, instead, that God takes delight in a certain amount of spontaneity, just as we do. I think He takes delight in our own free willed actions, and that sort of delight is not unrelated to the type of delight He might gain from seeing what comes about through a less directed system.
Adaptation and isolation have produced speciation.
I said nothing about the molecule DNA. I said God created the language of DNA.
Then I think we’re in agreement, buffalo. We agree, I think, that the evolutionary process is possible, even likely, the method God used to make the various living organisms we see. He authored all, and He is in His own creation, not just the Lawmaker but the Law. And I think He wants us to find wonder in the amazing complexity and scope of the system He created, so much greater than us in time and space and so far beyond our ability to truly control, with endless discoveries awaiting us because He used these methods. We can even take continual wonder at how organisms continue to evolve, as He continues to create, to make new life, through evolution. That is why I think evolution glorifies God all the more. And why I think it is ridiculous error to think that evolution could possibly exist without God, ridiculous to think that God did not design evolution and intend its outcomes.
No, God created the rules of chemistry and physics, knowing they would result in DNA and life.
Amen!
Unlike starting the ‘process’ and then stepping back, God willed each one of us. The ‘process’ was not independent of Him. Further, it cannot be fully explained, except dimly, by science.
Science can explain a lot about it, just not the “why.”
I completely agree that God willed each one of us, and that the process was not independent of Him. Evolution does not oppose either of those.
 
The why has been expounded upon in great detail. Evolutionary psychology clearly states that chemical reactions lead to genes which upgrade human intelligence from time to time. No reason. Just chemicals.

Peace,
Ed
 
The why has been expounded upon in great detail. Evolutionary psychology clearly states that chemical reactions lead to genes which upgrade human intelligence from time to time. No reason. Just chemicals.

Peace,
Ed
And if this were true how does this conflict with anything?
 
I think there is danger in saying that He actively directs seemingly random occurrences, however. Danger both in the possibility that we’re talking about a God who makes something look random when it is not, and in the possibility that we’re making God guilty of making errors along the way to a defined goal.
Who says anything is an “error”? Do you consider a child with down syndrome an error? Clearly there is a genetic issue there. It is improbable God would leave anything to chance. This has nothing to do with our free will, however. I see no danger in the fact that God carefully cares for His works and guides it. Like I said, nothing happens by chance.
“Random” is not a number.
Well, there are PRNGs that are “random”. But it’s still not possible to have a purely random computation.
 
Evolution is not “random”, it happens for purposes of survival and adapting. I guess you also think the reason you get hungry when you don’t have food is also “random” eh?
Evolution states it is natural selection acting on random mutations.
 
Darwinian evolution, strictly speaking, begins after the first life has developed, and so I agree with Larry Arnhart that it does not necessarily refute the claim that there may some kind of “first cause” to the universe that stands outside of “nature.” But this “first cause” allowable by Darwinism seems incompatible with the God of the Bible. It cannot be a God who actively supervises or directs the development of life. The most it could do is to set up the interplay between chance and necessity, and then watch to see what the interplay produces. Such an absentee God is hard to reconcile with any traditional Judeo-Christian conception of a God who actively directs and cares for His creation. In the end, the effort to reconcile Darwinism with traditional Judeo-Christian theism remains unpersuasive.
Therein lies my biggest issue with this theory. The God who meticulously created from Love, and interceded for us, even unto death, death on a cross can not be the Darwinian god. When Jesus healed the blind from spit and vulgar dirt, did He inject a culture of cells that would evolve into a pair of eyes?
 
Something worth reading. Let’s discuss.

Is Darwinian Evolution Compatible with Religion?
That is an excellent website and a great essay by John West. Darwinism is compatible with “religion” as long as the beliefs are twisted enough to fit into the Darwinian paradigm. Some try that with Catholicism …
If we take the results of modem science seriously, it is difficult to believe that God is omnipotent and omniscient in the sense of the scholastic philosophers… Let us suppose that God possessed the theory of everything, knew all the laws of physics, all the fundamental forces. Even then could God know with certainty that human life would come to be? If we truly accept the scientific view that, in addition to necessary processes and the immense opportunities offered by the universe, there are also chance processes, then it would appear that not even God could know the outcome with certainty. – Fr. George Coyne
So, the only way to make Catholicism compatible with Darwinism, according to Fr. Coyne, is to create a false god (and heretical Catholicism) who does not know what evolution will create.
 
Firstly, It’s o.k. to look at scientific discoveries with a critical mind but our minds as christians should be on Christ. Hence this “Christlike” mind should govern our reaction to all statements and news announcements. Science will continue to trot out new missing links (ie… Piltdown Man, Lucy, and a myriad of others) but remember none of them prove anything but that a non-christian scientific mind will always try to explain their theories no matter how thin the straw is. So be prepared.
 
Do you think that the human soul is merely the product of chemicals?
The soul is outside the realm of science
That is an excellent website and a great essay by John West. Darwinism is compatible with “religion” as long as the beliefs are twisted enough to fit into the Darwinian paradigm. Some try that with Catholicism …

So, the only way to make Catholicism compatible with Darwinism, according to Fr. Coyne, is to create a false god (and heretical Catholicism) who does not know what evolution will create.
Social Darwinism and Evolution are 2 entirely different things.
 
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