Why you should think that the Natural-Evolution of species is true

[rossum]

‘One of the most damning moments in the trial involved the use of a text-matching program to compare Of Pandas and People to the earlier editions. Sure enough, most of the book was identical to the earlier versions. The cosmetic difference was that all instances of “creator”, “creationism” and “creation science” were replaced with “intelligent agent” and “intelligent design”, leaving substantive content essentially unchanged’ Of Pandas and People - RationalWiki

The book which gave us a perfect example of a transitional fossil: cdesign proponentsists.

 

[IWantGod]

Please don’t insult my intelligence:

‘One of the most damning moments in the (Dover) trial involved the use of a text-matching program to compare Of Pandas and People to the earlier editions. Sure enough, most of the book was identic
al to the earlier versions. The cosmetic difference was that all instances of “creator”, “creationism” and “creation science” were replaced with “intelligent agent” and “intelligent design”, leaving substantive content essentially unchanged’ Of Pandas and People - RationalWiki

What a world…

 

[PetraG]

Wow, 8,465 posts…

Therefore by not allowing a divine cause it is so limited. Why should anyone limit their search for knowledge so severely.

The short answer?
Science advances by testing and questioning. Faith and revelation are outside the sphere of the method.
God cannot be put to the test.

A miracle is defined as an extraordinary sensible effect wrought by God that surpasses the power and order of created nature.

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Science, meanwhile, is the study of the power and order that is inherent in created nature.
Those things the Divine Will accomplishes according to the power and order that God put into created nature are within the purview of science. Those things the Divine Will accomplishes by a power and order that is above that put into created nature are supernatural: miracles.

If someone were to say there are things that can be investigated by science and things accomplished by the power of God, that is making a false dichotomy. Everything that exists, including all order in the universe, all matter, and all energy, and all beings, whether embodied or existing as spirits only, are the creations of God, created from nothing.

These are the possibilities, then: One is that God created all things with biological life on earth via the action of the power and order God put into matter and energy itself. The other is that God elected to intervene into the universe in a way that was above or outside the typical functioning of matter and energy in order to create the living things on earth. If God elected to create life on earth via the first mechanism, it will be discoverable by science. If by the second, then two possibilities exist. The first is that the intervention will appear to be something that cannot be accounted for without invoking supernatural intervention. The second is that the intervention might have appearances consistent with natural processes, even though those were not responsible.

If God created life by employing natural processes God built into the universe and foreknew would result in life, then the theory of “intelligent design” would be accurate but there would also be a scientific explanation, such as natural selection, and scientists would see no reason to call it “intelligent design.” If God created life by an intervention that cannot be explained without admitting supernatural intervention, it would not be “intelligent design.” Science wouldn’t conclude from the lack of an explanation that no explanation could exist, however. Science would assume that a natural means could exist that science had not found yet. If God created the universe by a supernatural intervention, it is still possible that science might think it happened by natural means if there was no evidence they could find that it could not have happened that way.

As Catholics, we must believe this: God created the universe and all life came from God’s hand. We are not an accident and life on this earth is not an accident. After that, though, there are various possibilities.

 

[PetraG]

I would say, then, that the question “Why you should think that the Natural-Evolution of species is true” is primarily a question of whether there is such a preponderance of evidence that no other natural explanation is likely to be true. If you are convinced that it was certainly a miraculous event and any appearance to the contrary is merely coincidental, I guess that is possible, but it is no longer a scientific opinion. There is another possibility, however, which is that someone allows that a natural explanation is possible but that same person is not ready to accept that natural selection has enough evidence to be considered very highly likely to be true, because of gaps that remain in the mechanism.

The absence of observed instances of one population with one number of chromosomes giving rise to a different population with a totally different number of chromosomes seems to me to be an example of such a difficulty. Some might think there has to be a way and be willing to presume it will be found while others might think that the absence of anything like that in spite of looking for the mechanism makes doubt that it exists entirely reasonable.

 

[Edgar]

From Aloysium, post 8390:

“The cardiovascular centre, located in the medulla oblongata, is responsible for the regulation of the heart rate. It is influenced by the nervous and endocrine systems. While the heart beats normally without its (name removed by moderator)ut, under stress, physical or psychological, the cardiovascular centre affects the rate at which the heart beats.Through the vagus nerve, it causes the rate to increase when we breathe in and decrease when we exhale. When we exercise, we build up lactic acid and the consequent change in pH is detected by central chemoreceptors and also peripheral chemoreceptors in the aortic and carotid arteries, where changes in blood pressure are also detected. Some of the nerves that connect the cardiovascular centre the cardiac pacemaker, are part of the sympathetic nervous system, and cause the heart to beat faster and with a greater stroke volume. The vagus nerve, part of the parasympathetic system, causes it to beat slower and less strong. The hormones, epinephrine and norepinephrine, produced in the adrenal glands and various neurons, act throughout the body, including the cardiovascular centre, causing it to increase the rate of its messages resulting in a faster rate and higher blood pressure.The cardiovascular centre ensures that bodily tissues receive a sufficient amount of blood.”

The last thing you need is to be reminded of this sort of interdependent complexity - you and your evolution god can’t even explain the Primary School version of how and a heart and its essential partner - the brain stem - could have evolved separately, yet end up perfect tuned to each other and to the needs of the entire body.

 

[Edgar]

You imagine? Is that how you discuss matters such as biology and evolution? If you keep being corrected then I guess that the odds dictate that you will stumble on a correct response eventually. Personally speaking, I would hope that the people with whom I am discussing matters would actually investigate that which they claim before actually claiming it. Bit late now, but you could read this info on the matter: Electrical System of the Heart. The problem with giving you all this information is that you are going to realise that it’s all a lot more complex that you could possibly ‘imagine’. Consequently, your incredulity meter is going to go into the red, only reinforcing your belief that all this is waaaay to complex to have evolved.

After all that you “forgot” to address my questions. In light of the distinct lack of answers, your “If you don’t like the message, shoot the messenger” strategy is understandable, althought it’s hardly scientific.

And you are not even right on this matter. You need to remove a chickens brain stem (which controls the heart rate - not the brain) as well as its head (and brain). Otherwise it will live as long as you keep feeding food down its neck. Look it up.

More irrelevant nit-picking and evasion. You’re doing your best to avoid discussing the intractable problems faced by an evolutionary model.
Please be advised that you may well be the only person on earth who doesn’t consider the brain stem to be part of the brain. Regardless, the point is, a heart can’t fulfill its function in isolation - it needs a brain to tell it what to do: According to ToE, a heart and it’s essential partner - the brain stem - evolved separately, yet they somehow ended up complementing each other perfectly while also serving the needs of the entire body. ToE can’t explain this synchronisity without insulting the intellligence of every rational mind.

 

[Edgar]

I think your belief in the supernatural makes perfect sense. Belief in the supernatural is our God-given default. The supernatural-free, self-creating universe is a figment of the God-denying imagination

A “decent education” or being dissatified with organised religion are not valid excuses to reject belief in the supernatural or in a supernatural Creator.
“Ever since the creation of the world (God’s) invisible nature namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” - Romans 1:20.

I was not always a Christian or even a theist, but it was after learning about the staggering complexity and synchronicity evident in even the simplest cell that convinced me there must be a Creator. So it was actually science (ie, the natural world) - not any religion or holy book - that began my spiritual journey that ultimately led to the Catholic Church.

Funny enough, evolutionism is all about using your imagination

There are evolutionary biologists who devote their lives to imagining how humans descended from sponges and jelly fish. But personally, when it comes to science-fiction, I think the Star Trek and Lost in Space stories were much more entertaining. Evolutionary theorists are wasting their time and fabulous imaginations in the sphere of science - they would be much more useful and make much more money in Hollywood.

*[“science”–aka that wondrous make-believe, flying sphaggeti monster, pseudo-scientific mythology that sea sponges or comb jellies can turn into people if you wait long enough]
.

Evolutionist articles often claim that the chambered heart may have evolved from a jelly-fish (because the rythmic motion of some jelly-fish vaguely resembles a beating heart). I’m not joking!

Well, I’ll have to leave my continued teasing of my evo brethren for a (much) later time–this is an anniversary weekend

William, get your priorites right - you seem to be implying that your wife is more important than this thread!

 

[Bradskii]

Wow, 8,465 posts…

buffalo:

Therefore by not allowing a divine cause it is so limited. Why should anyone limit their search for knowledge so severely.

The short answer?

Well written.

 

[Bradskii]

According to ToE, a heart and it’s essential partner - the brain stem - evolved separately, yet they somehow ended up complementing each other perfectly while also serving the needs of the entire body.

Beats me why you waited all this time to offer this line of argument. The same would apply to all parts of the body: ‘Gee, how come my legs evolved and then somehow my brain evolved to tell me to put one foot in front of the other? And how come lungs evolved and then somehow my brain evolved to tell me to breath in and out?’

This is really an argument? And it took you well over 8,000 posts to realise this?

 

[Bradskii]

Bradskii:

Please don’t insult my intelligence:

‘One of the most damning moments in the (Dover) trial involved the use of a text-matching program to compare Of Pandas and People to the earlier editions. Sure enough, most of the book was identic
al to the earlier versions. The cosmetic difference was that all instances of “creator”, “creationism” and “creation science” were replaced with “intelligent agent” and “intelligent design”, leaving substantive content essentially unchanged’ Of Pandas and People - RationalWiki

What a world…

And here’s a specific example of what they did:

'Example of earlier creationist edition (emphasis added):

" Creation means that the various forms of life began abruptly through the agency of an intelligent creator with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings, etc."

Example of new Improved Intelligent Design edition (emphasis added):

" Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an [intelligent agency , with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, wings, etc."

This and things like the Wedge Document helped lead John E. Jones III to his verdict that intelligent design was the same as creationism and that the ID movement was a subversive attempt to inject creationism into the classroom.’

And if that wasn’t a clincher, here’s Johnson of the DI espousing on their modus operandi:

‘Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools.
This isn’t really, and never has been a debate about science. It’s about religion and philosophy.’ (my emphasis).

Game, set and match. Thank you, linesmen. Thank you, ballboys.

 

[Aloysium]

a heart and it’s essential partner - the brain stem - evolved separately, yet they somehow ended up complementing each other perfectly while also serving the needs of the entire body

And, they are said to have evolved, in tune with the necessary and equally developed relationships of the whole creature within its environment, all this because something went wrong, at a chemical level, in the reproduction of the genome as it would have been transmitted to the next generation, and the offspring lived long enough to reproduce themselves, passing on and adding to the glitch.

We should consider that little explanation above about the cardiac pacemaker is not the tip of the iceberg of what goes on in the body, right here and now, but merely a snowball, collected from such a mount and thrown into the waters.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . à propos the above, speaking to the intersect of mind body and spirit in the one relational being that is the person:

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. . . about which, the BBC provides a more understandable version:

Brain clue to ‘broken heart’ syndrome

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[IWantGod]

A Song I Made About The Soul Casual Discussion

 

[IWantGod]

A Song I Made About Leaving Something Behind Casual Discussion

 

[buffalo]

And here’s a specific example of what they did:

It does not matter. Either the science is correct or it is not. Pretty simple really.

Since Dover we have learned so much more that supports ID.

 

[PetraG]

‘Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools.
This isn’t really, and never has been a debate about science . It’s about religion and philosophy.’ (my emphasis).

Oh, yes, what some mean by Intelligent Design and what I mean by intelligent design are two different things!

I think intelligent design, generally speaking, is an attempt to say specifically that the creation of life as we know it was an act of the sovereign will of the Creator, not an act of God’s permissive will, let alone the result of random chance.

In other words, God didn’t just go, “oh, hey, look at that, something is wiggling on its own on the 3rd planet from that star over there. Well, isn’t that interesting!” No, to some of us it means that a being that is omniscient could actually have a sufficient grasp of physics to plan life on Earth all the way to our life as the result of the Big Bang. To others, it means, “Science cannot find a way that life could have arisen without recourse to a supernatural event. It doesn’t matter if you have ten thousand years or four billion years; such a thing just defies logic.”

Yes, precluding discovery of a merely natural mechanism for anything whatsoever is a philosophical stance. Why? Because science itself cannot come to such a conclusion. Science cannot declare miracles, but can only conclude that there is no natural cause known that could reasonably explain a certain event or situation, such that miraculous intervention is the most reasonable possibility of the known possibilities. Science always has to admit that there might be a natural cause in operation which is too rare for people to be aware that it exists.

Well, if you have a philosophical bent that says there is no such thing as a miracle or a sentient creator of the universe, of course you are going to contend that everything has a natural cause, whether we have discovered it or not: you will philosophically preclude miracles as even possible. If you have a philosophical bent that says that anything that happens according to random processes has to be in some realm of the permissive will of God and doesn’t really count as God’s direct creative action, you will likewise contend that life cannot have a merely natural cause, because Holy Scriptures say that God created living things directly.

There is a third way, however, which says that any physicist knows that what we call random processes do not leave us with an inherently unpredictable universe. An infinite knowledge of physics would theoretically allow creation of Earth and the life on it as a predictable result of the Big Bang. That isn’t to say this had to have been the way God elected to do it. It only says that God could have elected to arrange the universe and the laws of its operation in that way. It might look random to us, but could still be entirely predictable by an infinitely superior intellect with infinite physical capacity.

 

[PetraG]

I have to say, though, that it is my understanding that a Catholic may not preclude the existence of miracles–that is, intervention of the Almighty by means that are above or outside the typical order built into the universe–due to the plain meaning of the Gospels. Why? Because Our Lord said that the signs He did were worked by faith, by a profoundly close connection with the Almighty, not by merely learning a physical technique. A miracle is something that occurs by means the Almighty did not put into the typical order of the universe (the "typical order "being the order by which humans have such dominion over our planet without recourse to faith).

I don’t think Genesis was written to give the impression that it is a science textbook, because two different creation accounts are given. That implies to me trying to explain something to a child that is above the child’s comprehension. The stories could be attempting to communicate truths about Creation to the child that the child has no vocabulary to hear or comprehend completely. That makes it possible (not necessary, but possible) that the accounts are what they are because the original audience did not have the background for a literal communication of the mechanism of Creation and that the exact mechanism of Creation wasn’t even remotely the point of the revelation, anyway. The creation accounts absolutely preclude the possibility, however, that life on Earth was random in some sense of happening according to God’s permissive will rather than as a result of deliberate creative action.

 

[Bradskii]

Bradskii:

And here’s a specific example of what they did:

It does not matter. Either the science is correct or it is not. Pretty simple really.

Since Dover we have learned so much more that supports ID.

Whatever you have learned has zero relevance to the fact that it was painfully obvious to everyone with half a brain that the ID movement has been (and still is) blatantly dishonest in the most clumsy way possible in their insistence that the movement is about science.

How on earth do you have the temerity to even suggest that the ‘science is either correct or it is not’ when the leaders of the ID movement actually tell us that ID is not even to be considered part of the debate:

‘This isn’t really, and never has been a debate about science’

Just this one sentence alone completely and utterly destroys any credibility for any argument you have ever put up that insists we should consider the science. Your own side has shot you down in flames.

 

[buffalo]

How on earth do you have the temerity to even suggest that the ‘science is either correct or it is not’

It is. Despite you wailing, the investigation goes on and knowledge increases. Every day it is an increasingly uphill battle for evolution.

The science is being done, and publicized.

 

[PetraG]

It is. Despite you wailing, the investigation goes on and knowledge increases. Every day it is an increasingly uphill battle for evolution.

The science is being done, and publicized.

Science being done to find a blind spot in the prevailing assumptions is the norm. That is how science advances.

Science being done to support an alternative but nevertheless pre-ordained conclusion that did not come out of any physical observations that lead in that direction is a much dicier prospect. That dish needs far more grains of salt.