Is religion guilty of moving the goalposts?

[aiddon]

Uwot, we tried...

[Kurt]

Aiddon, Uwot
Gentlemen your posts have not been in vain, I have received a lot of good information from them and will be utilising it. Thank you

[aiddon]

Aiddon, Uwot
Gentlemen your posts have not been in vain, I have received a lot of good information from them and will be utilising it. Thank you

Much obliged Kurt. Reason will win out in the end.

[aiddon]

Darwin even noted that lacking discovery of the intermediate forms would undermine his theory. Here we are, over 150 years since The Origin... was published and we still have not found the intermediate forms.

Like, major bummer.

Mike, you obviously know very little about evolutionary biology. How can you make such a sweeping, grossly inaccurate statement? Do you even know what an intermediate form is?

The Judeo-Christian God as revealed in the creation and the Bible makes the most sense to me.

It does? The sickening rationalisation of war and violence, the oppression of women, infanticide, murdering of homosexuals and adulterers, the promotion of a perverse, psychopathic God who enjoys nothing more than playing cruel tricks on fools, human sacrifice, hellbent on sentencing anyone who goes against his will to eternal damnation. This makes sense to you? Wow.

I guess you go along with Jules Verne's version of the centre of the earth? The ones with huge cavernous lands populated with dragons and oceans. After all, there is no actual evidence for a molten core, no actual evidence for a semi-solid mantle - just scientific postulation. You don't? Is that because it is a reasonable scientific theory? Or is it because it keeps a wide berth of religionists' mad ideology? Don't wise crack to me about double standards, Mike.

[uwot]

The way I see it is the evolutionists use “just-so” stories to get around the weaknesses of their model,

Maybe. But 'evolutionists' can then look at the world and see if it fits the story.

e.g., the Cambrian explosion and the utter lack of any ancestors in the pre-Cambrian strata;

What exactly is the problem?

the less than infinitely remote probabilities of any type of single protein self-assembling never mind the number of differing proteins necessary to assemble even the simple form of life, again never mind how the simple form could become alive; the purposeful information contained in the genome.

Do you have any understanding of the processes that give rise to 'less than infinitely remote probabilities'?

I’d go so far as to say that had Darwin known of the complexity of the cell (we’re just scratching the surface here) and the complexities of DNA, the Origin of the Species may have beer been written or at least would have had a different content. Darwin even noted that lacking discovery of the intermediate forms would undermine his theory. Here we are, over 150 years since The Origin... was published and we still have not found the intermediate forms.

We will never discover enough intermediate forms to convince someone who believes it all happened according to the bible; it's a new twist on Henry Drummond's god of the gaps.

Like, major bummer.

Like, not really.

Supposition, built upon supposition, ad infinitum, built upon sketchy evidence doesn’t make evolution a fact.

The evidence is perfectly clear. Human beings exist, they have features in common with other animals. There is archaeological evidence of other beings that bear striking similarities to people alive today, but clearly had attributes that distinguish them from us. These are facts. Evolution is the theory that those beings were ancestral humans and that we as a species have changed over time from them into us. As you say, that doesn't make it a fact.

I’d also agree that creationism or Intelligent Design also have their own weaknesses if viewed from a scientific perspective. So what is one to do? I suppose agnosticism might be the most intellectually honest position, but few will settle on that.

If by agnosticism you include the understanding that evolution and the big bang are theories, subject to revision in the light of new evidence, you would be advocating the position of most intellectually honest people.

But once you start adding the non-physical aspects of life: emotion, thought, laws of logic, numbers, social constructs, morals, etc., the evolution model further weakens as it has no way to address these aspects of life.

No indeed. Evolution is not about any of those things. It is an odd leap though, to go from 'we judge things good or evil' to 'therefore the world was built in seven days'.

The Judeo-Christian God as revealed in the creation and the Bible makes the most sense to me.

Fair enough if it makes sense to you, but if you are intellectually honest, you need to reconcile the biblical account with the archaeological facts. I have never seen anyone achieve that without:

Supposition, built upon supposition, ad infinitum, built upon sketchy evidence...

Wanna try?

Aiddon, Uwot
Gentlemen your posts have not been in vain, I have received a lot of good information from them and will be utilising it. Thank you

Much obliged Kurt. Reason will win out in the end.

Indeed. Fight the good fight.

[MMasz]

Darwin even noted that lacking discovery of the intermediate forms would undermine his theory. Here we are, over 150 years since The Origin... was published and we still have not found the intermediate forms.

Like, major bummer.

Mike, you obviously know very little about evolutionary biology. How can you make such a sweeping, grossly inaccurate statement? Do you even know what an intermediate form is?

The Judeo-Christian God as revealed in the creation and the Bible makes the most sense to me.

It does? The sickening rationalisation of war and violence, the oppression of women, infanticide, murdering of homosexuals and adulterers, the promotion of a perverse, psychopathic God who enjoys nothing more than playing cruel tricks on fools, human sacrifice, hellbent on sentencing anyone who goes against his will to eternal damnation. This makes sense to you? Wow.

I guess you go along with Jules Verne's version of the centre of the earth? The ones with huge cavernous lands populated with dragons and oceans. After all, there is no actual evidence for a molten core, no actual evidence for a semi-solid mantle - just scientific postulation. You don't? Is that because it is a reasonable scientific theory? Or is it because it keeps a wide berth of religionists' mad ideology? Don't wise crack to me about double standards, Mike.

Uhh, yeah. I teach biology. I know enough to see evolution is a fable.

Makes more sense than rocks and water “evolving” into homo sapiens. You also have an exalted view of mankind and a distorted view of God.

[MMasz]

uwot. you wrote, "Fair enough if it makes sense to you, but if you are intellectually honest, you need to reconcile the biblical account with the archaeological facts. I have never seen anyone achieve that without.”

Please inform me of the things needing reconciliation.

[thedoc]

Uhh, yeah. I teach biology. I know enough to see evolution is a fable.

Just curious, in what school do you teach Biology?

[thedoc]

Do you have any understanding of the processes that give rise to 'less than infinitely remote probabilities'?

I’d go so far as to say that had Darwin known of the complexity of the cell (we’re just scratching the surface here) and the complexities of DNA, the Origin of the Species may have beer been written or at least would have had a different content. Darwin even noted that lacking discovery of the intermediate forms would undermine his theory. Here we are, over 150 years since The Origin... was published and we still have not found the intermediate forms.

We will never discover enough intermediate forms to convince someone who believes it all happened according to the bible; it's a new twist on Henry Drummond's god of the gaps.

Sometimes it's just amazing how small a gap an anti-evolutionist can squeeze into.

[Harry Baird]

Science is not analogous to the way you and Immanuel Can think

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. How is it that you believe I think? I don't remember even mentioning any opinion on evolution.

OK, so, on reflection, your first answer isn't so bad - basically, it amounts to, "We don't have so many fossils because most carcasses fully decay and decompose before getting the chance to be fossilised". Fair enough.

Your second answer, though, is a little vague and hand-waving. You write: "Some molecules attract particular atoms, with particular mass and charge and in some instances, this causes molecules to build replicas of themselves". In fact, molecules associated with life don't start self-replicating until you get to something like an RNA molecule. It's not like you have three atoms joined together and they happily make a new molecule of those same three atoms, and sometimes something goes amiss and an atom is added, and slowly you build up to more complex molecules, as your explanation seems to imply - self-replication is complex, and so is RNA. It's not easy to explain how a fully-functional RNA molecule just happened to appear in the first place, and as far as I know there is no generally-accepted answer to this question - and in fact there are competing theories to the "RNA world" theory in any case.

It's all very well for you to believe that it must have happened somehow, but as of now, as far as I know, there is no consensus scientific explanation, so for you to have explained as though there was one is a little... dare I say, faithful? If not, then presumptuous.

[edited to change "a molecule is added" to "an atom is added"]

[Kurt]

Why is it that many people of faith will put observations of science under great scrutiny
(And so it should). But very rarely will they place their faith under the same microscope.
Even to the point that stuff is made up to fill in the holes. At least when science does this they admit it with "this is our best guess at the present time given our observations". Faith however is more akin to a quantum particle, answers depend on how you look at it and who is looking. Like the title of this thread.
This is where some with faith loose credibility when comparing evolution with creationism. Not that they don't have an argument as many in the evolution camp admit it's a work in progress and creationism in some form might have a place, just not evident yet. Stick to where the evidence is. For example I remember seeing some research on the idea that there seems to be a half life clock built into the evolution of our ancestors discovered by looking at the base of skulls. It's not concluded yet but this could give an indication of grand design through observation.
Leave the rest in the Church where it belongs.

[uwot]

Please inform me of the things needing reconciliation.

I already did.

The evidence is perfectly clear. Human beings exist, they have features in common with other animals. There is archaeological evidence of other beings that bear striking similarities to people alive today, but clearly had attributes that distinguish them from us. These are facts.

Science is not analogous to the way you and Immanuel Can think

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. How is it that you believe I think? I don't remember even mentioning any opinion on evolution.

I note that there are differences in your two opinions, but as far as I can tell, you both believe that examining books and concepts is a reliable way to gain insight into reality. You are rationalists of some sort, it seems to me. For all the hypothesising and theorising, science is ultimately empirical; if an idea cannot be shown to produce demonstrable effects in the real world, it is metaphysics.

Your second answer, though, is a little vague and hand-waving.

Yes; and I prefaced it with an admission that chemistry is not my strong point.

It's all very well for you to believe that it must have happened somehow, but as of now, as far as I know, there is no consensus scientific explanation, so for you to have explained as though there was one is a little... dare I say, faithful? If not, then presumptuous.

It quite clearly did happen somehow. Furthermore, there is a mechanism that we have some understanding of, that we can explore to find out whether it can produce RNA and DNA. A scientist will say: 'Let's see'; it is presumptuous of creationists to say:'It can't'.

[Harry Baird]

uwot: Science is not analogous to the way you and Immanuel Can think

Harry: I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. How is it that you believe I think? I don't remember even mentioning any opinion on evolution.

uwot: I note that there are differences in your two opinions, but as far as I can tell, you both believe that examining books and concepts is a reliable way to gain insight into reality. You are rationalists of some sort, it seems to me. For all the hypothesising and theorising, science is ultimately empirical; if an idea cannot be shown to produce demonstrable effects in the real world, it is metaphysics.

Oh. :-)

Well, unfortunately, it seems I have given you the wrong impression of my approach, or perhaps, dare I suggest, you have missed those parts of my posts where I've explained my respect for the empirical - for example, for the implications of the empirical experiences of others, whether those experiences be NDEs, spiritual encounters with Christ, or astral projections.

I do have a healthy respect for the scientific method. I studied engineering at university after all (I quit about 2/3rds of the way through my course due to personal problems, but academically I was doing just fine), and I studied physics and chemistry in my matriculating years of high school.

It's all very well for you to believe that it must have happened somehow, but as of now, as far as I know, there is no consensus scientific explanation, so for you to have explained as though there was one is a little... dare I say, faithful? If not, then presumptuous.

It quite clearly did happen somehow. Furthermore, there is a mechanism that we have some understanding of, that we can explore to find out whether it can produce RNA and DNA. A scientist will say: 'Let's see'; it is presumptuous of creationists to say:'It can't'.

Are you interested in my own view? I will take the risk that you are not and explain anyhow.

It's something of a hybrid between the scientific norm and creationism. I recognise that there is a lot of scientific evidence for "materialist" evolution, but also that, on the other hand, there is a lot of evidence too for a spiritual aspect to the human being; both that which one might refer to as a "soul", and that which one might refer to as an "astral body" (which is not even to mention consciousness itself, the "hard problem" of which even now admits of no "emergent" explanation). I have no problem with the theory of evolution as being in general scientifically sound, but it seems to me that it cannot account for these spiritual phenomena, and thus that it is not "the whole story". It seems to me that there must be an element of design to life too, to account for its spiritual aspects. I would suggest then that the "complete" answer might involve some sort of process of guided evolution, such that there are templates towards which the physical aspects of life - teleologically - evolve. It is, as with most of my views, provisional and tentative, and I'd welcome your thoughts on it.

[Kurt]

Yes I agree,
Use opinions or evidence from the realm they come from, eg. Science, faith, metaphysics etc. don't try and put one into the other when it does not fit with any sort of reasoning. Otherwise we run the risk of going back to a flat world that the universe revolves around. Over time some areas might cross over into others, however at the moment science seems like the only tool we have that can possibly achieve this. So maybe faith should promote observation through science rather than trying to debunk it with myth.

[aiddon]

Uhh, yeah. I teach biology. I know enough to see evolution is a fable.

Makes more sense than rocks and water “evolving” into homo sapiens. You also have an exalted view of mankind and a distorted view of God.

Correction, you're teaching a version of biology - the subjective, biased, dogmatic version. With statements such as "Rocks and water evolve into homo sapiens" - it's probably just as well as you're not teaching the standard curriculum.