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Taylor, Ervin
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Adventists on Darwin and Evolution, Part 1
Submitted: Feb 6, 2013
By Ervin Taylor
On the weekend of February 8-10, 2013, more than 500 congregations associated with a number of Christian traditions will celebrate “2013 Evolution Weekend” as a means of emphasizing the compatibility of Christianity and biological evolution. This is the 8th year that such a weekend had been organized. We all know the name of the 19th-century English naturalist, Charles Darwin, and the book, On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection, which provided the most detailed exposition of biological evolution as one of the most influential scientific concepts in the history of science.
The Christian congregations participating in 2013 Evolution Weekend include those affiliated with the various denominations or branches of the Anglican, Baptist, Church of the Brethren, Congregational, Disciples of Christ, Episcopal, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Presbyterian, Quaker, Swedenborgian, Unitarian Universalist, and United Church of Christ traditions. Many Jewish and a few Islamic congregations will also be participating, although surveys have determined that Orthodox Jewish and about half of all members of Islam in the United States reject biological evolution and its implications.
Although no individual Catholic parishes are listed as participating, a recent announcement by the Vatican noted that the present Pope and a number of his predecessors have declared unambiguously that Darwin’s evolutionary theory is compatible with Catholic Christian faith. Back in 2009, the Roman Catholic Pontifical Academy and Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome held a conference to mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s major work. A recent poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that Catholics joined mainline Protestants, most Orthodox Christians, non-Orthodox Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and the “unaffiliated” in overwhelmingly accepting evolution as the best scientific explanation for the development of living forms—including humans—on earth.
We can be reasonably certain that no Seventh-day Adventist congregation from anywhere in the United States—or, for that matter, anywhere in the world—will participate in the 2013 Evolution Weekend. We know that institutional Adventism joins with other conservative evangelical and fundamentalist churches and denominations—such as the Watchtower Society (Jehovah’s Witnesses) and Mormons—in rejecting the key scientific idea contained in Darwin’s work, which represents the view that all life forms on earth evolved from common ancestors over hundreds of millions of years, primarily by the process of natural selection.
Focusing our attention just on Adventism, we might ask the question: “What is it about the Adventist theological tradition that has caused this small branch of Protestant Christianity to reject the ideas embodied in Darwin’s great scientific work?”
We can begin by reminding ourselves that when Darwin published Origin of Species, Adventism had, at most, 800 adherents scattered in “little flocks” in the northeastern United States. The organized Adventist Church did not as yet exist. As Darwin’s ideas or, more often, interpretations of his ideas, spread into the popular consciousness through various means in the communities where early Adventists lived, the reaction of individual Adventists adherents to Darwin’s ideas were almost certainly similar to those of all other working and middle class Christians in these communities. Unless an individual possessed some formal education beyond the elementary school, the ordinary Christian layperson almost instinctively contrasted Darwin’s view with what was being taught in the pulpits on weekends, about God’s creation of the world in six days about 6,000 years ago. The first chapter of the Book of Genesis in the King James Bible editions of that day even contain in their margins the date of Creation as 4004 BC.
Thus the views of early Adventists on this topic were essentially the same as all other Protestant Christians of similar background. What has happened through succeeding decades to completely alter this? Why have other Christian bodies—some quite conservative in some matters—modified their earlier views about evolution? Why is the Adventist Church not celebrating the “2013 Evolution Weekend” to show the compatibility of Christianity and biological evolution? What has changed?
Part 2 of this blog will suggest some answers to these questions.
Two reasons: fear it will undermine our doctrine of the Sabbath (which it won't as Jack has written about several times) and undermine the authority of Ellen White (which it doesn't have to either if we have a biblical-human as opposed to impossible-mythical view of the gift of prophecy.)
"Thus the views of early Adventists on this topic were essentially the same as all other Protestant Christians of similar background."
This is an aspect of Adventism I am quite interested in. Many (often conservative) Adventists talk about their fears of ecumenicalism. But conservative Adventism strives hard to maintain its own ecumenical credentials of a sort - it's just the choice of friends that liberals and conservative differ.
For example, the 'historic' Adventist wing is not so 'historic' at all but rather something that was largely created after Ellen White's death in the 1920s. During that time the conservative wing took to the for and tried very hard to prove its credentials to the new and growing fundamentalism movement - where fundamentalism was not such the pejorative word it is now.
I guess in some ways even the pioneers were trying to conform to their own notions of non-conformity, during a time when a number of grass-roots restorationist and revolutionary Christian movements were forming - which is why we have the JWs and Mormons also arriving at the same time. But similar periods of history occured during the puritan era in England, during the Reformation, or even during 1st Century Palestine (where Jesus was hardly the first raddical messianic miracle worker).
"Part 2 of this blog will offer suggest some answers to these questions."
I look forward to your answers Ervin.
If "Darwinism" is thought of as if it were religious dogma, it loses some of the most important dynamic features. Science is devoted to understanding things as they are through careful empirical research. Implications that Darwin gave us "the truth" are just deeply misguided. That Darwin, with a big boost from Alfred Russel Wallace, suggested a mechanism by which biological change could occur (selection). He had little knowledge or understanding of how genetics worked or how the variation arose upon which selection could act.
It is fine to acknowledge and celebrate the insight of Darwin and Wallace and the concept they proposed. It was indeed a dramatic advance. It is totally inappropriate and rather destructive to WORSHIP Darwin. That is the way I see it, so I do not excessively venerate Darwin, and call attention where possible to the important role of Wallace. BTW, some here might enjoy reading The Malay Archipelago by Alfred Russel Wallace.
The reason the SdA church is fighting evolution: it would destroy the YEC and with it the sabbath. It is the foundation for adopting the seventh day as their worship day; despite its never being given for man following creation, and the first scriptural command for its observance is found in the Law given to the Israelites and no others. With the "fall" of sabbath, the entire trail of dominoes fall. Rather a fragile foundation to be built on the lack of commands to Christians.
With respect, I don't think that explains then why so many Christian denominations are willing to accept the possibility of evolution. Are you saying all these other Christian groups don't believe in a biblical idea of sin or have a different notion of Christ as our savior?
'Perhaps that is the test--whether to believe in a violent God...'
That's a better answer. A range of Christians, including many scholars who do believe in evolution, have noted that the problem of theodicy (why bad things happen) gets a whole lot harder when you add evolution into it. Evolution says we got here after billions of years of suffering, agony and death, and some 99% extinction rate. What does that say about a loving God?
But I don't think theodicy alone is a barrier to accepting evolution. Eden alone had the sinful serpent in it, and Lucifer's rebellion occured before the earth was even created. All evolution does it make the Great Contoversy bigger - much bigger, and the main characters older - much oder, and more evil - much more evil, than we thought before.
Who says that if evolution were true Adam and Eve were not literaly figures? God called the seas and land to bring forth the animals - He didn't create them out of thin air. He made Adam out of 'clay' (i.e. pre-existing stuff) - again not our of thin air.
Adam may not have been the first homo sapien but he may have been the first homo divinus. That is, the first prophet, or the first being on planet earth to have a level of consciousness that recognised the one God Yahweh. Adam was the first representative of humanity, not necessarily the first human. In the same way Christ is firstborn of the resurrection (1 Cor 1:18), which means in a representative sense, for Christ is not litereally the first human to be raised in a resurrection (e.g. Moses was before).
If Adam was literally the first human being on earth, then why did Cain fear he would be hunted down by other people - when there were none?
People on both 'sides' of the debate might not like to see a literal physical person called Adam and evolution mentioned together, but I merely point out it is certaintly a possibility.
Talking of geneologies in both the OT and NT, you do know they don't list every single generation, but rather only the notable ancestors? And you know the geneologies in the Gospels don't match exactly either? So of course one would expect Jesus to have His geneologies traced back to Adam, the first homo divinus human, and not to an earlier ancestor.
In studying genealogies today, either maternal or paternal is considered. I have been fortunate in tracing my direct genealogy for more than 1500 years, with both maternal and paternal ancestry. The Bible writers knew nothing of maternal gene contribution, as only the father conceived a child.
In our day, Douglas Futuyma’s biology text explains evolution thus: “By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.” Evolutionary Biology, pg. 5.
These represent "standard evolution" do they not?
This is what is in the mind of most people when they think about what evolution is, right?
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The minority view, but some see in Evolution a useful theodicy in that the bad in nature is not God’s fault but simply the results of mindless material development of life. In this view, Christians are revolted by death and predation in nature and can’t see God as having any part of it. A good example of this would be Dr. Francisco Ayala "Darwin's greatest discovery: Design without designer," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Vol. 104:8567Ð8573 (May 15, 2007).
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The majority view among Christian Evolutionists is the thought that Evolution is God’s method of creating life. This was basically Darwin’s view. The theodicy here is that Christianity is 'logical' and 'concords' with modern thought.
In general, in the Adventist Church and many, many others, we strong philosophical and scientific doubts about materialism itself. I believe these doubts are well founded.Or do you have a special definition of Evolution?
An opposite perspective is the majority of Christians wish to correct the misconception that Evolution as generally accepted is considered factual. What is in conflict with Christianity is the fundamentalist understanding of Evolution.
Why is it OK for materialists to mix theology with science in public textbook, but wrong for theists to do so???
"The theology of evolution is not science!." Nic provides us with a classic illustration of why many educated individuals take those speaking from what is insisted to be "Christian" perspective with such little regard..
There could be many other explanations for the evidence. Would it be science to say that my computer created itself?
We cannot prove to the planet that God exists either--we only have evidence; sometimes personal and sometimes more obvious--like beauty, nature, and goodness. It's a personal choice.
With all respect, in the final analysis these attempts to mollify or accommodate the so-called educated by seeking some reconciliation between the Biblical narratives and disbelief of the Biblical narratives are inevitably laughable.
Interpretation is used as a euphemism for disbelief—which can be different than unbelief—but of course few will admit it.
This is not to say however that believers are necessarily any better than disbelievers; but that Pharisees are different than Sadducees.
"... attempts to mollify or accommodate the so-called educated by seeking some reconciliation between the Biblical narratives and disbelief of the Biblical narratives are inevitably laughable."
Stunning honesty, thank you for your candor, Stephen. Little more needs be said of your view of the "so called educated", which, i suppose, includes anyone unlike you.
"Interpretation is used as a euphemism for disbelief—which can be different than unbelief—but of course few will admit it."
Brother Foster has again outdone himself. Evidence that when one clutches too tight the pencil,
he draws the lines of interpretation around himself. I suppose, in his defense, he truly believes it is his right and calling to discomfit, exclude, divide and drive out those "so called educated" readers and writers who dare disagree with his exclusively correct interpretations..
Is it necessary to personalize comments?
(Perhaps you should read the entire post.)
Let me ask, are comments that suggest that “the educated,” whoever they are, are better informed than “fundamentalists,” whoever they are, suggestive of exclusivity or division to you?
Perhaps learning to fish, instead of beating them on the head with your 1 iron might be suggested.
Its more fun than golf, has sport to it, requires finesse. And story telling.
Besides, a titleist doesn't taste as good as a trout no matter how well you bash it.
Ahh, well, despite the differences, I'll take not your bait. Or your ball. Sorry, Stephen.
But here's a little easy read for you, which I borrowed from another thread.
Or, perhaps less important than which requires more faith, but which faith is based upon the right viewpoint? It seems competing issues underlie the conversation-one seemingly denies faith as much as the other denies "science".
Why does faith automatically seem to have requisite need to deny science? (and in the areas of applied science, ie medicine, how do we resolve the conflict that arises on many levels here, often entirely unaddressed)
The other question perhaps no less prickly, why do the overwhelming majority of scientists-at least publicly-seemingly deny faith entirely?
Is it perhaps consequent to an imperfect view of God-an "image of a distorted God reflected by imperfect Christianity" ?
What can I as a Christian (who does not reject science as a perfectly inquisitive and totally amateur layman) do to more properly embrace my brothers and sisters of science? After all, they each are also children of the God of heaven, if I have read the old book and understood its stories correctly.
I think we perhaps err tremendously with claims the Bible is inerrant science textbook. I understand one of the reasons we may do this out of expedience to avoid this prickly conversation, and another might indicate a reticence to question our faith, as if that were itself bad (but perhaps indicates our faith is more shaky than we dare/care admit).
BTW, I would like to ask an OT question here which Joe Erwin brought to my attention;
when did the Atoday "about us" blurb become, seemingly, an "active Adventisits only" website, one which ostensibly excludes ex-Adventists and non-Adventists?
Do we desire only a mutual admiration chorus here, even if itself is in utter disharmony?
"Educated" infers someone is well-informed about his world and its inhabitants, which includes the knowledge of history, literature, the arts, and science. But those who are formally educated in the branches of science should be disparaged and called "exclusive."
There are many branches of learning and no one can be fully educated in all. Which is why we usually defer to those who have much more formal education and/or experience. Just as all can read the Bible, few are able to read in the original languages, we respect their ability in aiding us in interpreting its words. Physicians are equally educated and we usually seek their knowledge when our bodies are not functioning properly.
There is real dichotomy in religious circles that extols faith as necessary to interpreting the Bible stories, but it should also be used as a template to measure all the discoveries in our world, using the Bible as a scientifically literal book. It was never intended for that purpose and should be read as the writers intended: to reveal the ideas and thoughts of their world view. Why should it be ours today?
Let me suggest a couple of possibilities: 1) Adventism quickly became, in its early days, highly sectarian. That led to insularity and, because a theologically induced persecution complex was part of what it meant to be an Adventist, we defaulted to the conclusion that if we were in the minority, we must be on the right track. A persecution complex and sectarianism are mutually reinforcing, inducing resistance to the cultural and intellectual cross-pollination that opens a culture to evolutionary change. I don't mean this as a criticism. This reality has had both positive and negative effects on the Church.
The second, and closely related phenomenon, is the SDA infatuation with literalism. Because of EGW counsels, probably seeded by writings of conservative Protestants who distrusted the "new" literary genre of fiction, our Church grew to believe that anything which was not literally true was of the Devil (I would like to hear a scholar of literary history and culture give me a better understanding of how this notion evolved and became embedded in fundamentalist religious subcultures.). I remember as a child that my mother frowned on any reading material, whether it was story, illustration, or moral object lesson story that was not true. Even Mother Goose was off limits. There was only one exception: Pilgrim's Progress. I'm sure many readers raised in the Adventist subculture will nod in recognition.
So Adventists have historically had little capacity to appreciate either the beauty and profundity of myth, or the ability of the moral imagination to reveal Truths that cannot be reduced to neat propositions and principles, but that shape morals and behaviors in ways that echo in eternity. It wasn't until I went to college, and was introduced by religion and speech professors to thinkers like Tillich, Bultmann, Fromm, Frankel, and by English professors to writers like Dostoyevsky, Hemmingway, and Camus, that I began to understand the power myth has exerted throughout history to reveal transcendent reality. Life has never been the same since, and my faith has been enriched transformed by incorporating myth and mysticism. The Biblical story of creation and the Fall is far more powerful to me as myth than as literal truth. I don't need for it to have actually happened in the manner described in order for it to be true.
Adventism got itself trapped by sacralizing 19th Century literalism and turning it into a kind of religious materialism: "Only that which emanates from physical, literal reality can be true." Traditional Adventism has taught that God, like George Washington, cannot tell a lie - a lie being defined as a statement that is not literally true. While other religious traditions were able to see that Darwinism was only a threat to the extent that it presumed to dictate moral truth, and tell us the nature of ultimate reality, Adventists, who had completely unlocked and revealed the puzzle of scripture, saw Darwinism as a threat to God Himself. "After all, a God of truth would never mislead or deceive by allowing Himself or His actions to be revealed by His servants in other than universal language which could be taken literally."
Adventists have historically denied that they are sectarian, while making the writings of Ellen White sacred text. And they have denied that they are literalists, while insisting that the Bible must be taken literally, at least when it comes to what Adventists believe. These realities are, I believe, at the heart of why institutional Adventism has been unable to come to grips with the OEC and OLC science. I look forward, Erv, to your take. Somehow, knowing how you reverence EGW, I suspect you may also be inclined to give her a little credit for the SDA Church not sending representatives to the conference (lol).
Would it be more or less powerful or meaningful to your faith if some or most of that is not true?
Where do you draw the line? What part(s) of Scripture must be literally true?
Can you tell me how I can "rationally" study the supernatural? Certainly not with the scientific method. How would I design a series of experiments to provide sets of data where we could reasonably argue that "god" or some other supernatural entity is involved? Yes science assumes natural causes and that assumption is its power. The universe is explained by natural forces and these are comprehensible. Furthermore, if science cannot explain a phenomena that does not mean it is inexplicable. Some phenomena had to wait for explanation with the gathering of new data and more advanced analytical tools. Once you invoke supernaturalism into any explanation you enter the theological and religious world where everything becomes opaque.
To challenge religious traditions with the rigor of science may be using the wrong tool as to challenge Darwinism with the rigor of relgious traditions. However I do agree that we need to challenge scienctific statements or interpretations of religious traditions with the rigor of science.
Here is another challenge: prove theory of evolution with the rigor the highest level of science, meaning of prospective, reproducible facts.
Now, even the hint that much of the Bible is myth is considered heresy by those who cannot accept that myths have always been the method through which truth was taught: truth of life and death, love and courage. The law of unintended consequences has ruled again.
Extremely Important point Nathan. Are we missing much of the allegorical symbolism with overliteralization?
I believe God could have done it as Adventists have interpreted the words of Genesis 1. I just don't think the available literary and scientific evidence supports that conclusion. I believe in miracles, and I believe in the Incarnation. I think it is clear that the writers of the Gospels intended that their narratives be taken as factual. The fact that a phenomenon was contrary to science doesn't mean it didn't happen; it simply means that it was either supernatural, or we do not have a naturalistic explanation for it. Also, the story of Jesus needs to be true in order for my life and faith to make sense. The Adventist perspective on creation does not need to be true in order for my life and faith to make sense.
Actions, not beliefs, reveal the man and they are not limited to those who accept the biblical account of creation as nowhere must the "correct" concept of creation equal a free ticket into heaven.
Why this digression?
I don't see the issue in quite such black and white terms as you seem to. I don't see how any particular affirmative belief logically follows from questioning whether the traditional Adventist interpretation of Genesis 1 is scientifically or theologically sound. There are lots of alternative conclusions to the ones you suggest. I am not persuaded by the arguments for macro-evolution. And theologically, the Biblical story suggests a special creation for humans - created in the image of God. Neither faith nor reason incline me toward a God who evolved. So you need to resist the temptation to push Adventists, who question the traditional SDA interpretation, into any particular belief camp. I am by no means a Darwinian. I just don't believe in YEC or YLC; and I do believe in the Creator God of the Bible.
Assuming we were the product of evolution, why do you say there could be no Adam and Eve? Why couldn't God have taken a highly evolved hominid, and infused it with His Spirit and moral passion? Have you ever wondered why, if the world outside the Garden was so pristine and perfect, God needed to put Adam and Eve in a special Garden?
Evolution as change over time = 'common descent' guided by 'front-loaded' genetic programs interacting with the enviromment through epigenetics and natural selection ??????
Evolution as change over time ='common descent' guided by mutations (Chance and Necessity) ?????
Nic, I thought I sort of answered this. I agree with you that Adam was the product of special creation. I just don't think that belief is inconsistent with OEC/OLC. And I also agreed that God could have done it within the linguistic walls erected by fundamentalist Christians. It's just that neither my faith nor reason demand that. And since many features of YEC/YLC, as scientific fact, seem to me to defy reason and science, I am very reluctant to chain my faith to what I consider faulty reason and science.
You add a philosophical/theological element - "How could a kind loving God create through suffering and death over millions of years?" It's a fine question and one I can't answer, any more than I can answer how He has revealed His creative power through suffering and death over the last 6,000 years. I suspect the great controversy between good and evil predated The Fall. Philosophical/theological reflection runs the danger of reaching dangerous conclusions about impenetrable dimensions of reality, and anthropomorphizing God. The same kind of philosophical/theological arguments that you offer are used by many theologians, including Adventist theologians, to make a compelling case for Universal Salvation. "How could a kind God of infinite love eternally destroy creatures made in His image...?"
The possibility and nature of God's moral responsibility for things as they are, and have been, is beyond the pay grade of humans. But we still ask those questions. I have many times observed that God speaks to us not so much to inform us as to evoke a response. If, in our dialogue with Him and with one another, the questions to which we do not have satisfactory answers draw us closer to Him, without prompting us to nail tighter the lid of the theological box in which we may have put Him, we are asking the right questions with the right heart. If, on the other hand, the same questions produce distrust, and distance us from God, or lead us to confine Him in a concrete bunker, they should probably not be pursued, as they will in time harden our hearts, close our minds, and alienate us from God and His creation.
I recognize that this forum is not universally accepting of historical Adventist or dogmatically Christian fundamentalist perspectives; so I particularly thank you.
(Obviously, I’ll not be as quick to let you off the hook— although I hope that you do not consider it a ‘hook’—as Brother Campbell is.)
The Adventist perspective on creation, as you know, is not just the Adventist perspective. There are many other Christians who believe that God literally said that He created this planet in six days (Exodus 20:11); and that by “days” he meant days as we know them (evenings and mornings).
If God did not say this, or if God did not mean “days,” then it would appear we have no idea when He said anything, or meant anything.
Personally, I believe that the miracles in the Bible, particularly those performed by Jesus—and most particularly the resurrection of Lazarus—are recorded so that we would have reason to believe that our God can do absolutely anything; despite contrary scientific evidence.
Any way you cut it, if Christ could be conceived without human sperm, and raised from the dead, both of which defy (all) scientific (or known scientific) possibilities—then what literary or scientific evidence can convince us that He didn’t do what He has repeatedly claimed to have done?
I would imagine that perhaps you believe the creation narrative to be “qualitatively different” than the gospel narratives of Jesus’ incarnation at least in part because of the multiple accounts and various witnesses of the latter; certainly as compared to the former.
But no one witnessed Enoch’s translation. No one witnessed the war in heaven, or the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness.
You have indicated that your faith does not rest on whether what God said He did is literally true or not. Is it based solely on your experience?
I don’t need, and have no standing to demand, an answer; but am intrigued because I do not begin to understand.
It is the Adventist position on Sabbath which is the unique belief differing from all other Christian denominations that forces the adoption of the literal creation account in Gen. 1. Even to question that account would be self-destructive and Adventism would not longer have reason to exist. That is why the Gen. 1 account must be the ONLY one and no other. Where would sabbath be if the earlier story recorded in Gen. 2 was the foundation of creation?
You say "Evolution in terms of origins was not discovered- it was invented." To be fair "creation" as an explanation of origins is also an "invention" of the human cortex. Many evolutionists do not necessarily utilize evolution as a thorough argument for the origin of life.
As I ponder whether to address your question as to what has happened in succeeding decades since Darwin to prevent Adventism from yielding on Darwinism, whereas some other Christians have sought an accommodation; it occurs to me to ask you if you can “handle the truth.” Since you are open enough to ask the question I know you fear no answer.
As Stephen Ferguson points out, it surely has something to do with the Sabbath. However I think that instead of a desire to maintain the Sabbath doctrine, it is the other way around. It is because SDAs make an effort to “remember the Sabbath” that they have not bought what Darwin has sold to many/most others.
In other words, they have not bought Darwinism because they are (largely) not in the market (as we say in the sales game). They are not in the market because the Sabbath reminds them how and Who created what; simple as that.
When we disregard the Sabbath, as many Christians have, we may find Darwinism plausible. At least it puts us in the market; not unlike Eve with the serpent.
(I know that type of Adventism is irritating, so I apologize for irritating anyone.)
That is to say, chronologically, God blessed and set apart for a holy or religious purpose the seventh day of the week prior to the deliverance from Egypt.
From a Biblical perspective, it is also a fact that God is quoted at Sinai as commanding the Children of Israel to “remember” something that He had done in blessing and sanctifying the seventh day of the week; which I believe implies that they had previously heard of that which they were now told to “remember.”
The fact is that the Deuteronomy 5: 1-21 version of the Commandments is a recounting of the original event that neither supersedes or negates that which God is quoted to have said in Exodus 20—and Deuteronomy 5:12 indicates that God had previously commanded observance of the seventh day.
In any case, while Ellen White may be accused of many things, she can’t be accused of inventing any of this. But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Thus, there is an undeniable link between the Sabbath command in Gen 2:1-3 and the 4th Commandment of the Decalogue in Ex 20:8. The link is there, whether the actual events of Gen 2:1-3 happened before Ex 20:8 chronologically as Stephen Foster says (and I personally believe), or not utilising JEDP.
The Sabbath command in Deut reference doesn't make any reference to the Creation account - that is true. However, it represents a different tradition, whether it be the Northern stream of Israel (as opposed to the Souther stream of Judah), as found by Josiah in the Temple (where the scroll was brought by fleeing Israelites after the Assyerian invasion), or whether it represents a pius fraud.
It doesn't negate the Ex-Gen link, especially if one adopts JEDP, because that link is a P link. If one rejects JEDP it doesn't negate the link either, but merely illustrates that the same theological objective can have different theological reasoning. We should remember that principle when we accuse each other for heresy for believing the same thing but use different reasoning to get there.
Could it be that the God, who created the natural order, gave us the Sabbath to free us from that natural order nad remind us that we are not simply a part of nature? Could it be that, in placing the Sabbath Commandment as number four, God was reminding His chosen people of His Lordship over the fourth day of His created natural order? Could it be that the Deuteronomic rationale (freedom) and the Exodus rationale (creation) are completely complimentary? Just as God created the Sabbath to free humans from the natural order, and at the same time reminded them that He was the creator of that natural order, so He reminded the newly freed Children of Israel that they were no longer slaves to the quotidian demands of the natural pagan order worshipped by their masters. They were now subjects and dependents of the God above Egyptian gods. Through the Fourth commandment, perhaps God wanted to remind Israel, as well as us, that the fourth day of creation heavenly bodies, by which our lives seem to be controlled, do not define us; that we are in essence spiritual beings; and that, in the seventh day freedom from work each week, we celebrate and create anew a non-natural order. On the seventh day we can triumphantly proclaim freedom and creation, because we belong to the Creator who gave us the natural order AND who frees us from that natural order.
It's really pretty mind-blowing if you reflect on it. We don't need a literal 24-hour, seven-day creation to believe in the Sabbath. We need the Sabbath to remind ouselves of a Creator who isn't subject to the natural order He created.
God also provided the light needed, right from the first 'day', which could very well have been from a fixed position thereby accounting for a fixed recurring 'evening and morning' operating right from the 'first' day, until Mr Sun was allowed to show his face. Hence the evening and the morning, night and day, which literally occurs almost every twenty four hours. The rest is history so to speak.
Stephen, I view this as a false, but honest question. It is false because it presupposes that we can don the filters of the culture and language in which God manifested Himself to actually know what He said and meant. The medium of language necessarily and simultaneously falsifies and reveals profound truth. How much is the problem compounded as we move through thousands of years of language and culture to find and recreate meaning! I think fundamentalists tend to underappreciate this reality.
As has been discussed on Andy Hanson's blog about The Fall, it is certainly not at all self-evident that what God told Adam and Eve about the consequences of eating the forbidden fruit was literally true.
So my faith always, and of necessity, rests on what humans have communicated about God's revelation to their time and culture. And by faith, I believe that God's Spirit will illuminate my 21st Century pathway through prayerful and humble study of that revelation. Believing that the Bible is God's Holy Word does not mean I believe it is God's dictation. I have found the Wesleyan Quadrilateral to be a very compelling model for keeping my faith grounded in revelation, reason, tradition, and experience. You say you do not begin to understand it, Stephen. Welcome to the club. I don't understand it either, at least not so that I can make an airtight propositional case for the Truth of my convictions and experience. But I can believe, even if I don't see God's lips moving, that He speaks to me, without having to go out and make sure that it is literal or True in any universal sense.
There is an "earnest expectation" of freedom from "vanity" of death and predation due to 'free choice.' "For the earnest expectation of the creation waits for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God." Romans 8:19-21
In context you have the 7th day with no ending. Interesting!
You have 'evening and morning,' not morning and evening. Interesting!
You have the root meaning of 'evening' meaning disorder, and the rooting meaning of 'morning' meaning order. Interesting! The literary form is not simply prose.
We do not know any of the writers. There are many who have concluded that the priests wrote the creation story specifying each day's activities, and included God's resting on the seventh day (just as was recorded in the Babylonian creation story) to renew its observance which had been disregarded which the prophets were exhorting Israel as the cause of their exile.
As Erv has written, the writers were not given prescience to see the world as we today, but were limited by their knowledge and wrote accordingly.
This is not a trick, Dr. Taylor, because for discussion’s sake, God conceivably or theoretically could have meant each day to have been representative of a billion years.
But do you think that God actually said what the author quoted Him to have said; or was He being misrepresented?
These commentators go for a day/age view a thousand years before there was a scientific controvery regarding the age of the earth.
Erv, if you want us to stick to the topic - certainly a good idea - you need to resist the temptation to indulge in drive-by opinionating. I presume (hope) that you bring a different data set and metrics to your scientific conclusions than you do to biblical criticism. It is generally not a good idea to try and buttress an argument with premises and assumptions that are highly debatable, and weaker than the argument one is trying to advance.
One of the problems with devoting one's life to a particular discipline is that it heavily biases him toward viewing all of reality through his professional filters. This easily leads to insular thinking and a casual smugness about conclusions which the chosen discipline has inadequate epistemological tools to reach. These conclusions are packaged in intellectual jargon, and then bounced around in the echo chambers of academia until they become Truth by consensus.
I know, Erv, that you don't want to sound like religious fundamentalists, who arrive at conclusions by much the same processes as scientific fundamentalists. The best way to avoid that is to not offer, as fact, the consensus of the scientistic herd whose "objective" inquiries begin with atheist presuppositions, and - surprise , surprise - end up confirming those presuppositions.
Amen!
Demystification and discrediting of the Hebrew story of creation, by reference to creation stories extant in other contemporary ancient cultures, has long been accepted wisdom among non-observant theologians and biblical scholars. And I presumed, Erv, when you made the comment you did, that you were simply parrotting what your presuppositional mind set had led you to believe was the best thinking on the subject. And, of course, you love to tweak the piety of observant, conservative Christians almost as much as I love to tweak the smugness of those who "condescend" to trample on beliefs that are founded on faith in the transcendent, personal God of the Bible.
That's all I'm saying. I find it ironic that, if we could fast-forward a few thousand years in earth's history, we would no doubt find the echo chamber of academia in agreement that secular humanism took moral precepts and values which have their provenance and foundation in Judeo-Christianity, and turned them into pagan precepts and values, grounded exclusively in reason and science. So you see, just because it's an echo chamber doesn't mean it's wrong. It simply makes self-doubt and directional change rare commodities. And it makes it virtually impossible for the transcendent, creator God to enter human history or human hearts to alter the destiny of that from which He is excluded. But hey - no worries...we can still have faith in natural selection and random mutation...
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The sun is intrumental in giving us our year as per Earth's orbit of it. The months are determined by lunar phases - at least they originally were and our Gregorian Calender tweaked to fit the twelve months as introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 as a reform of the Julian calendar. The day is measured by one full rotation of the Earth on its axis.
The week doesn't have similar phenomena to measure it except the literal seven day Sabbath cycle week as far as I can see.
God also provided the light needed, right from the first 'day', which could very well have been from a fixed position thereby accounting for a fixed recurring 'evening and morning' operating right from the 'first' day, until Mr Sun was allowed to show his face. Hence the evening and the morning, night and day, which literally occurs almost every twenty four hours. The rest is history so to speak.
"The week doesn't have similar phenomena to measure it except the literal seven day Sabbath cycle week as far as I can see."
Originally, the Israelites calculated sabbath by the new moon which is a 28-day cycle. We know for a certainty that the yearly feasts of Israel were timed by the sun and moon: Psalms 104 and Lev. 2-3 prove that the sole means by which the seventh-day Sabbath was calculated was by the moon. "The moon was made to tell the seasons."
2 Kings 4:23: Why are you going to him today? It is neither the new moon nor the sabbath."
2 Chr. 24:31: "And at every presentation of a burnt offering to the Lord on the Sabbaths and the moons and on the set feasts...."
2 Chr. 2:4: "I am building a temple for the name of the Lord....for the burnt offerings morning and evening, on the Sabbaths, on the new moons...."
2 Chr. 8:13: "According to the daily rate, offering according to the commandment of Moses, for the Sabbath, the New Moons, and the three appointed yearly feasts....."
Neh. 10: "for the showbread, for the regular grain offering, for the regular burnt offering of the sabbaths, the new moons, and the set feasts.
Is. 1:13 and 66:23: "bring no more futile sacrifices, incense is an abomination to me, the new moons, the sabbaths...." "And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord.
Cunieform records disclosed the fact that the Babylonian shabattum fell on the 14th or 15th day of the month and was referred to as the day of the full moon. It became clear that in these biblical passages we have another survival of what must have been the primary meaning of the Hebrew term shabbath. The Babylon text specifically indicates the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days as those of Sin, the moon-god.
A calendar indicating the moon's cycle and sabbath shows that sabbath will fall on every day of the week, using the Hebrew calculation using the new moon. In Talmudic times, the day marking the New Moon was fixed by actual observation by at least two witnesses. As soon as the new moon was visible, the Sanhedrin in Israel was informed by the blowing of trumpets from mountain top to the next and Rosh Chodeh was formally announded. This sytem was later discarded in favor of the fixed calendar developed by HillelI (ca 360 A.D).
The actual word for "month" in Hebrew is chodesh which means "new moon." The International Date Line is man made, resulting in sabbath being observed on Saturday on one part of the Island and Adventists observe it on Sunday on another part. Man has desginated which day is the 7th depending on where he lives.
Would God's sanctification of the seventh day, and His command to keep it holy, have been nullified by a discovery that He didn't really need rest time, or that the creation cycle was not divided into seven 24-hour days? Was the command that Adam and Eve should not eat of the forbidden fruit nullified by the dubiousness of the rationale - by the reality that life would not, and did not literally end for them on the day that they ate of the fruit? Were it not for the Fourth Commandment, would you not believe that the earth and heavens were created in six literal days? It seems to me that you are letting the tail of the Sabbath wag the dog of Creation. If God's word is no better than your ability to rationalize it, you are very close to being a "progressive" Adventist.
A 6-day creation makes no logical or scientific sense, which of course does not make it impossible. But it seems highly specious to insist that something irrational and unscientific had to have occurred in order for a symbol to make sense. The Sabbath has profound symbolic meaning that penetrates much deeper than the ability to scientifically or theologically make the case for a literal 24 hour, six day creation. Jews have had no difficulty preserving the Sabbath and its meaning without hawsering it to nonscience.
“A 6-day creation makes no logical or scientific sense, which of course does not make it impossible. But it seems highly specious to insist that something irrational and unscientific had to have occurred in order for a symbol to make sense. The Sabbath has profound symbolic meaning that penetrates much deeper than the ability to scientifically or theologically make the case for a literal 24 hour, six day creation. Jews have had no difficulty preserving the Sabbath and its meaning without hawsering it to nonscience.”
How does a 6-day creation make no logical or scientific sense? I like to hear the scientific and logical reasoning for that statement.
You are right that natural science confines itself to natural phenomena so Biblical Creation is outside the realm of natural sciences. However the logical consequences of Creation pertaining to nature can be studied by natural sciences. Logic becomes our guide or sole means to draw conclusions. The same may be said about Darwinian Evolution. From observations to Origin of Species requires the extrapolation out of temporal range and imputation of data gaps --- two serious caveats of any scientific endeavor. This leads to the dilemma of dialogues between creationists and evolutionists. Both can be arguing outside the realm of natural sciences yet insisting they are engaging in scientific reasoning as evident from some of the exchanges along this thread.
To exclude 6-day creation from strictly logical and scientific realm may be logically consistent but to strictly exclude all supernatural phenomenon may land oneself in doubt even of one’s own existence. I am also interested in knowing the reason of your hedging for the possibility of the irrational and unscientific.
"Viewed with respect to its negatives, Gen 1:1-2:3 is a polemic against the mythico-religious concepts of the ancient Orient...The concept of man here is markedly different from standard Near Eastern mythology: man was not created as the lackey of the gods to keep them supplied with food; he was God's representative and ruler on earth, endowed by his creator with an abundant supply of food and expected to rest every seventh day from his labors. Finally, the seventh day is not a day of ill omen as in Mesopotamia, but a day of blessing and sanctity on which normal work is laid aside. In contradicting the usual ideas of its time, Gen 1 is also setting out a positive alternative. It offers a picture of God, the world, and man...man's true nature. He is the apex of the created order: the whole narrative moves toward the creation of man. Everything is made for man's benefit..." (p.37, Vol. 1, "Explanation," Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15 [Word Biblical Commentary, 2 vols.], Word Books, Waco, Texas 1987
A more interesting view is that the themes of ‘six days of creation and the seventh of rest, the fall of man and a flood of the known world,” are historical and /or oral traditions of real events that predate the writing of all that of Mesopotamia by thousands of years and from which their garbled redactions come.
I think Nate observed that liberal fundamentalism has a tendency to do what you consider impossible with double standard.
Some of the comments above suggest that the Bible isn't the word of God as taught in its pages [Luke 5:1; Eph 6:17; 1Cor 14:36-37; 1Thess 2:13; Rev 19:13, 16; John 1:1; 2Pet 3:5; Heb 4:12; 13:7; Jer 36:6; 2Chron 34:21].
I tend to think of the Bible as a gallery of portraits of God through time. Given there are a multitude of artists, using a multitude of artistic techniques, viewing the same subject from different angles, we should expect different approaches. A Vangough, Di Vinci, Michaengelo and Picasso are all going to produce raddicially different portraits, but they are all 'truth' in their own way.
But I believe the subject matter, God, was really there for them to paint. I don't believe God was just made up, like Dawkin's flying spagetti monster or floating tea pot.
Do you see it the same way?
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In [Gen 1:16, 19] we find that the sun and moon were made on the ‘fourth’ day. God took the seventh day rest ‘after’ the sixth day was ended which indicates that the moon was only in its third day when the first Sabbath was observed by God [Gen 2:2-3]. If the Sabbath is reckoned by lunar means as posited by some, then the first seventh day weekly Sabbath would fall on the tenth day of creation when the moon was on its seventh day – but this is not the case. The Lunar positions aren’t therefore instrumental in determining the weekly Sabbath and the seven day week itself. The literal seven day week is therefore marked by the Biblical Creation week found in the book of Genesis.
How do we know which day is seventh day in terms of the children of Israel being instructed to observe it? Before Sinai, God instructed them to keep the Sabbath when He gave them manna [Ex 16:22-23]. The weekly cycle was continued as such with Jesus the Lord of the Sabbath accepting and observing it [Matt 12:8]. The same weekly cycle continues today.
The notion that the Sabbath is not weekly but merely a lunar cycle is a common argument against Sabbath keeping, and doing the rounds (especially in Australia) at the moment.
The easiest way for me to work out this issue is walk down to the local Synagogue. What day do the Jews keep as a Sabbath - the seventh.
And do they have other sabbaths based on a lunar cycle - sure - their Jewish feast days. These lunar sabbaths can be weekdays, such as Yom Kippur, which was on a Wednesday in 2012.
"Why is it about the Adventist tradition, in contrast to many other Christain traditions, some of which are very conservative, that is making it difficult for 21st Century Adventism to deal realistically with the scientific evidence concerning evolution that is so compelling for so many other Christians?"
Some of us we do not have any impediment to accept the reality of scientific evidence, (creditable scientific evidence is when an observation can be replicated over and over). Is not compelling when the data is only retrospective. Retrospective data has great limitations. The ones who were formed with the rigor of the highest level of science have serious reservation to any retrospective data.
But more importantly, I am not aware of anyone who claims that Jesus miracles, the virgin birth, or His resurrection can be scientifically proven. What traditional Adventism asserts is that the Sabbath makes no sense unless we believe in a literal 6-day creation. The Sabbath has no physical reality. It is pure God-infused spiritual reality. It does not prove a 6-day creation. Do you really think that if God had taken 10 days to create the world, He could not have taken the seventh day of an artificial weekly cycle, sanctified it, and made it the memorial of creation and symbol of liberation from the natural order that He had created? Why hawser the Sabbath to the demands of the physical universe from which it is intended to liberate us?
Christ is the Creator of all things. This denies any other form of origins including evolution as preached by the faith science community. In fact, I would say that the faith version of evolution is in essence anti-Christ (anti-God) as it denies his sovereignty as the sole originator of all life [Gen 2:7-8; Rom 9:20; Neh 9:6; Isaiah 45:12, 18; Jer 10:12; Deut 4:39; John 1:1-3; Rom 1:25; Eccl 12:1; Gen 2:4-6, 15; 1Chr 16:26; Gen 1:1; Ps 146:5-6; Acts 17:24-26; Ps 33:6, 9; Rev 14:7; Ps 136:5-6, 7-9]. A theological basis to support evolution in terms of origins is not found in the Bible and therefore isn’t a plausible model that compliments or supports Creation.
Evolution is used to describe or demonstrate the built in capacity of living organisms to adapt and change over time; but this same scientific model cannot be arbitrarily extrapolated and accepted as provable, observable, testable and one which meets the stringent requirements of a truly empirical scientific model, in terms of origins. One would at least expect the scientific community to be honest about things getting out of hand and caution against such fanatical beliefs being upheld in the name of science – but wait a minute, it’s the so-called Christians, like in this case, cranking it up.
Could you give some statistics on 'a large group of Christians'? Number or precentage would do. Thank you.
As for putting a percentage on how many individual members of American churche bodies agree or disagree with the positions held by their respective denominations, I am not aware of any surveys of that specific question. On the other hand, surveys have consistently determined that about one third of Americans do not accept the implications of standard evolutionary biology while about two thirds do. If one was to guess then the "large group of Christians" in the United States would be about two thirds of them.
Nic's response is the classic one: Almost everyone else is wrong and my little group is right. I'm not suggesting that this may not be true. I am just pointing out the obvious fact that this is the view often expressed by those holding minority views.
are generally false. Hence, progress is profitable only to the manipulators & insiders, and the "lucky" few
contrarians. i believe this understanding of observation could be extrapolated to inclusion of majority views of almost any grouping.
The terminology “ proof of concept” is used in research (biology, medicine, physics). Usually in prospective studies to demonstrated the association between two or more variables. When this proof of concept is replicated over and over then we accept the high probability of association.
Evolution is based in possible explanations but not demonstrable facts. I’m honest and because my experience in research, I only give credit to observations that can be reproduced. If some day can be demonstrated and replicated that a microorganism changed to another one I’ll accept that fact.
Literally millions of dollars and pages have been used in favor of evolution but until now no one single evidence of reproducible fact has been demonstrated. So I give the proper value to the theory of evolution, just a theory, not a fact.
Many people accept evolution as a fact but when I ask the proof the answer is plenty of explanations some of the very elaborated other just inflamed imaginations. The reproducible evidence is absent
I don’t come from a religious background so when we talk about science I stick to trustable reproducible facts.
I'm concerned that we all-too-often find ourselves using a word or words that mean different things to different people in various contexts. It is not hard to find scientists who claim that the term "proof" has no place in science and should be limited to mathematics, and, perhaps, logic. Some scientists warn against anyone using the terms "proof" or "proven" in science. Their point, of course, is that nothing is absolutely certain, and that scientific methods only bring evidence to bear on various hypotheses in ways that support, or fail to support those hypotheses. There is, I think, some merit in this way of thinking, which promotes flexible probabilistic thinking over dogmatic absolutism.
Even so, I do not completely agree. I think some kinds of evidence can confirm one hypothesis and can "falsify" (essentially, disprove) other hypotheses. When I felt as if my leg was broken, a radiograph confirmed that hypothesis and provided detailed guidance regarding the management of the break. The hypothesis that my leg had only sustained damage to tendons or ligaments was falsified. Easy enough. No replication, no experimental leg-breaking or "prospective" study, was required. A careful, real world, technology-assisted observation was sufficient.
Now, "proof of concept" (also, "proof of principle," and "proof of mechanism") are terms used somewhat differently in different fields, but, in my experience, these are not used nor intended to imply anything as absolute as what you, David, claim is needed for "proof" of evolution. One sense in which the term is used is with regard to patents--essentially, the "proof of concept" is a working prototype (full-scale or not). I have encountered this in biomedical engineering applications and have been granted a couple of patents.
The other context in which "proof of concept" is most familiar to me is in drug discovery and testing, including assessment of safety and efficacy through a series of steps culminating in Phase III clinical trials in humans and FDA approval (or not) for manufacture and distribution, and beyond, to evaluate "off label" extensions. Despite the common use of this process, it is seldom regarded as "absolute proof" of safety or effacacy--and there are many demonstrations of failure of this kind of "proof" to detect problems that ultimately occur.
Now, I think the extremely abundant physical evidence (from geology, paleontology, morphology, physiology, and genomics) indicates that the world, and life as we know it, has been around much longer than 6000 years. The young earth hypothesis is false. The real, tangible, physical evidence indicates that life on earth is much older than that, regardless of what one may believe or wish to believe about ultimate origins. Many Christians have faith enough in God to continue to be devoted to Him even though the young-earth hypothesis has been falsified. That includes some Adventists--including some of the regulars here.
May be this will help to differentiate the tangible and the explanation (speculation) of the tangible. In the Altiplano of Peru was found some giant seashells. That is tangible even to this day.
How got these seashells there?
Some evolutionist says, “The mountains are growing”. The problem, the mountains are far away.
The creationist will say that is the product of the flood; the problem is to proof the flood
Another will say that was the “game of the Incas” they went and dive in the cold and deep water of the Pacific Ocean, carried to the high planes (more than 16,000 feet high. The problem is to prove it.
Ever time I have conversation with my atheist and evolutionist friends and pears I ask then to show one example of reproducible evidence of evolution. They have been honest and say is not one. If some day there is reproducible evidence of one organism becoming to another one I will accept the fact. If you have that fact show us.
Darrel, how can you conscientiously make such an assertion? Nothing could be much farther from the truth! And your supposed "fact," per Dr. Salisbury, is merely an assertion made more than 40 years ago, during which period, the amount of knowledge regarding the functioning of DNA, the roles of enzymes, and other aspects of developmental and genomic biology has doubled and re-doubled many, many, many times. If only we could honestly commit to following all that evidence wherever it leads, rather than deciding ahead of time what the evidence means, no matter what it actually is. If you are just going to accept explanations that support what you already think you know, what's the use in examining actual evidence at all?
Do not forget that it was Jesus the one who argued that the majority of individuals preefer to travel on the wide road, while only a few choose the narrow one. If you condemn me for believing this, you are condemning Jesus Christ, whom I cited.
Most Adventists I know do not share the theory that our planet--or the universe--is merely 6,000 years old. Why do we need to attempt to desroy what most Adventists do not beelieve in? Does it follow though that life on earth started millions of years ago? Do I need to conclude that my ancestors go back through apes and amaebas? The Bible traces our ancestry through Adam and Eve all the way to God! Do I need to posit the idea that future evolved apes one day will be able to build skyscrapers and write poetry like Shakespearee? Do I need to acdept the notion that some day viruses and bacteria will evolve into higher forms of life? Does science have better myths than those found in the Bible? Are scientific miracles like the Big Bang and Singularities more credible than the feeeding of the five thousand, the turning of water into wine, and the resurrection of Jesus?
Your statement that most adventists you know do not share the theory that our planet or universe is merely 6,000 years old. Well, I'm very glad to hear that, because I think it may mean that more adventists now recognize that the concept of a recent origin does not align with real evidence. There was a time when affirmation of YEC was essentially a test of faith among SDAs. You are saying that is no longer the case. Is that the experience of others here?
The origin of life is an interesting scientiific question.but remember if one is providing scientific answers, there can be no supernatural forces invoked.
"If only we could honestly commit to following all that evidence wherever it leads, rather than deciding ahead of time what the evidence means, no matter what it actually is."
Joe that is exactly the way evolutionists think. They have already decided ahead of time that because 7 day creation invokes the supernatural it is not science, and because it is not science it is impossible and therefore the only possible mechanism is evolution. Then they try to bend all scentific facts to fit the evolutionary explanation.
Lets take the above logic a step further. 'Something that invokes the supernatural = not science = impossible'. Virgin Birth of Jesus = supernatural = not scence = impossible. Ressurection of Jesus = supernatural = not science = impossible. Second coming = supernatural = not science = impossible. Turning water into wine = supernatural = not science = impossible, and so on ..... Then I guess that makes Richard Dawkins and other atheistic scientists right and I might as well throw my Bible away.
I suggest that you not throw your Bible away. You would probably feel lost without it. And science would not give you much comfort, especially if you were to discover how committed most scientists are to discovering how things really work, rather than being biased in the ways you think you know they are. In fact, many of us who are committed to seeking truth find that we only are able to get approximations of reality that are practically never complete. However, it is quite liberating to be able to change one's mind whenever evidence warrants a change, rather than being trapped in a corner where one must constantly defend against the threat of looming evidence.
"Scientific methods have been developed to study natural phenomena, not supernatural phenomena."
I agree Joe, but does that make the supernatural impossible?
"If you can't change your mind, are you sure you still have one?"
You ask a very difficult question that even today honestly we don’t know. For the benefic of some people I’ll simplify (sometimes the Greco-Latin words intimidates).
My background in biochemistry helps me a little bit. Several years ago an authority in biochemistry stated, “ DNA could explain life”. For him live began with the formation of DNA, I was very impressed. The more I study; I became for skeptical of that statement. Is true that we need the information of DNA to produce proteins (some of them enzymes), but this is not that simple. We need more than 60 proteins for just for DNA replication. So in simple words we can’t have proteins without DNA, and we can’t have DNA without proteins. This not just a philosophical dilemma it is a great enigma. May be some the wise man of AT can explain….
May be this will help to differentiate the tangible and the explanation (speculation) of the tangible. In the Altiplano of Peru was found some giant seashells. That is tangible even to this day.
How got these seashells there?
Some evolutionist says, “The mountains are growing”. The problem, the mountains are far away.
The creationist will say that is the product of the flood; the problem is to proof the flood
Another will say that was the “game of the Incas” they went and dive in the cold and deep water of the Pacific Ocean, carried to the high planes (more than 16,000 feet high. The problem is to prove it.
Ever time I have conversation with my atheist and evolutionist friends and pears I ask then to show one example of reproducible evidence of evolution. They have been honest and say is not one. If some day there is reproducible evidence of one organism becoming to another one I will accept the fact. If you have that fact show us.
We are (especially the young) priveledged to live at this point in time relative to the advances in scientific discoveries in various disclipines, especially Medicine. However man has never created a living life form
without pre-existing matter; an egg, a seed, a spore, a protein, etc etc. The truth of creation of origins, is
totally unknown. Attempt to extrapolate backwards or forwards and state for a certainty the answer is
evolution, survival of the fittest, is pure speculation.
With all due respect, I think your friends and peers may be trying to avoid getting into an argument with you or are just unwilling to spend the time and effort trying to explain things to you that you are unwilling to hear.
several hundred ft. above sea level, which has sea shells, bones of various animals not native to England,
tropical cats, and other creatures, all rolled up in an amalgam. Also a mountain top, in France, with the top sheared off, a piece weighing many thousands of tons, and a speciman found over a hundred miles away which has the exact measurements. Also other items supposed caused by hydralic action.
The rock was formed by sandstone fans/eroded silt being pressed under sea when much of Australia went under for a while. A rather ineresting sequence requiring much time, and which has implications for the flood.
And Erv follow with this comment “ I think Joe is right about many knowledgable individuals not wishing to get into conversation with those who raise, shall we say, sensational questions about marginal observations, because it would take too much time to explain why such ideas have no credibility with those familiar with the field data”
This just is remarkable!!! As far as I know nor Joe or Erv have ever been in the conversations that I have with my atheist or evolutionists pears or friends and have already jump to such statements. This is so far away from the facts.
Usually my friends and pears come to the table where I’m eating and initiate the conversation. They don’t avoid actually they like to seat and expend their lunchtime talking to me about these subjects. They know the conversation will be fun and intelligent. They respect honesty and knowledge. If I was an ignorant fanatic probably will avoid the conversation. They enjoy engaging in conversation with somebody who has solid background in nuclear physics and biochemistry, who graduated from medical school with the highest honors who during his post doctoral fellowship received awards for his research and has establish line of research that made already worldwide impact.
Sirs I accept facts, to unproven ideas, theories I just give the credit they deserve. So if you have a single evidence of reproducible evolution shared I’ll accept. My advice with all due respect, don’t write statement if you don’t know the facts.
And Erv follow with this comment “ I think Joe is right about many knowledgable individuals not wishing to get into conversation with those who raise, shall we say, sensational questions about marginal observations, because it would take too much time to explain why such ideas have no credibility with those familiar with the field data”
This just is remarkable!!! As far as I know nor Joe or Erv have ever been in the conversations that I have with my atheist or evolutionists pears or friends and have already jump to such statements. This is so far away from the facts.
Usually my friends and pears come to the table where I’m eating and initiate the conversation. They don’t avoid actually they like to seat and expend their lunchtime talking to me about these subjects. They know the conversation will be fun and intelligent. They respect honesty and knowledge. If I was an ignorant fanatic probably will avoid the conversation. They enjoy engaging in conversation with somebody who has solid background in nuclear physics and biochemistry, who graduated from medical school with the highest honors who during his post doctoral fellowship received awards for his research and has establish line of research that made already worldwide impact.
Sirs I accept facts, to unproven ideas, theories I just give the credit they deserve. So if you have a single evidence of reproducible evolution shared I’ll accept. My advice with all due respect, don’t write statement if you don’t know the facts.
Often the answer that is given is "Am I your tutor? Why don't you just go and read the scientific literature on the topic?" Or, the answer might be, "Go run a search and read about the evolution of horses (equids) or elephants or people or anything you wish." The scientific literature is full of reviews of fossil evidence, and, increasingly, of comparative genomics evidence. It is available for all to see and examine. It seems like you are requesting the equivalent of "proof texts" from the scientific literature.
Another suggestion would be to brush up a little on plate tectonics geology. I find the information on continuing tectonic uplift of the Himalayas fascinating--especially the apparent adaptation of plants and animals as the uplift gradually raises them to higher and higher elevations. I'm guessing that similar studies of the Andes are also both available and fascinating. But, I'm guessing (even though I often guess wrong) that none of that evidence addresses your challenge. You probably want an example in which one "kind" of organism changes into another "kind" of organism. And you are asking for a direct observation of that. Of course, no one can provide such an observation for any organism from a population that has a lengthy inter-generational interval.
Even though selective breeding was the basis for Wallace and Darwin suggesting the existence of an enormous reservoir of potential variation, the various breeds of dogs are all still of the same species. Not only that, but one might claim that all dogs and dog-like carnivores are the same "kind," and could share a common ancestor without having changed into different "kinds." And what of populations of animals that look alike but have different numbers of chromosomes (sometimes through polyploidy)? There are such examples, complete with reproductive isolation. You could find examples of Brazilian frogs or various populations of owl monkeys (Aotus, from Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, and elsewhere).
But (another guess), you would probably argue about every case, no matter how strong is the evidence is or which explanation fits best. But, then you might want to look at people who are doing experimental studies of evolution in populations of organisms with short intergenerational intervals. You will find evidence of biological change across time, including very specifically documented genomic changes and sometimes morphological differences. For non-sexually producing organisms, the speciation criteria of reproductive isolation changes, but you might not accept that criterion anyway.
Such changes are certainly important for medical practice as pathogenicity can change even from "passaging" a virus through a host. But, you would probably say, even though biological change has occurred, the organism is still a virus. If it was a retrovirus or lentivirus before, it still is. So, the arguments are endless, and they can be quite entertaining.
I think you might wish to take your own advice with regard to knowledge of the facts. You seem to have all the answers. I do not claim to. Even science does not claim to. Besides, much remains to be studied and learned, and I am quite open to following the evidence wherever it leads and to changing my mind as the evidence warrants.
Regardless of whatever we may disagree about, you have my sincere best wishes. I do not think you should wager your faith against the scientific evidence. No one is asking you to do that. I do not think any amount of physical evidence of evolution needs to threaten faith in Almighty God for those whose faith is strong enough.
"Experimental evolution of multicellularity." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [PNAS]
published online before print in 2012, but available in full text online. Authors: Ratcliff, Denison, Borrello, & Travisano.
And perhaps an even better introduction to this area of study:
"As it happens: Current directions in experimental evolution." Being published this week in Biology Letters.
[23 FEB 2013] It is already available in full text on line. The authors are Thomas Bataillon, Paul Joyce, and Paul Sniegowski, and email addresses are available for all three if you wish to communicate directly with them about their work.
David, I expect that you already knew that the scientific literature on this topic were available. All you have to do is look and read. You need not believe or accept what you read to become aware that the information is there. I advise being quite skeptical and subjecting all you read to very critical thinking and interpretation within a broader context of evidence and opinion. I wish you well.
My answer on the origin of DNA is that I do not know how it originated. It could have come from somewhere else outside earth, and some people suspect that is the case. But, as far as I know, no one knows. If it came from somewhere else, that just pushes back the question.
One can believe it was purposely created, and one can believe s/he knows by whom. One can believe that has somehow been revealed in credible sources. Or not. I think there is no truly conclusive proof either way. Perhaps if one CAN believe that, one should; but to claim that one KNOWS absolutely and definitely or that the conclusion is obvious really is not convincing, at least to me.
My best guess is that among a nearly infinite number of physical molecules, some accummulated with each other to form more complex molecules, and the some molecules attracted and grabbed onto other atoms and molecules and that some of those, through some sort of complicated process began to align complimentary structures, i.e., acting as templates for chemical assembly. As these molecules emerged they may have become functional in opportunistic ways. As more emergent properties occurred, they could have encountered more opportunities for functional consequences. And so onward.
Wait! Don't attack me yet! I said, it was just a guess. It is just speculation--a suggestion. I'm not insisting that you buy this concept. You are free to do as you please. If you can believe in ID, by all means feel free to do so.
All these things have surely been presented as, at best, mysterious. Miraculous. Indications that God is not bound by what are regarded as the "laws of nature." Then, let's see, a virgin birth. Hmmm. How many times has that been asserted? "But we didn't really DO anything--at least, not that I remember...." And somehow, Jesus ancestry is traced through Joseph.... Or, what about the wild idea that God the Spirit could have inseminated Mary with God-sperm? Or artificially inseminated her with sperm of His choice. We do not know. We cannot know. We can deny material existence. We can accept supernatural forces on the advice of authority. We can live in our imaginations. All things are possible.
Just lets assume for a moment there is ID in the origins of life.
Now: Tell me, without using the Bible, what kind of God that offers you?
Thanks
--------------
Intelligent Designer?
You seem not to be able to accept that non-living chemicals are able to increase in complexity through orderly processes. More orderly complexity can emerge from less complex and orderly chemical activity. Perhaps Dr. Kootsey could comment on the concept of "emergent phenomena."
Your conclusion about intelligent design seems to be based on the notion that orderly complexity and self replication COULD NOT be emergent phenomena. Now, I am not claiming to KNOW that they DID. I am suggesting that they could have, and that the "orderliness" (which I think you are identifying as "design") had to be imposed by God. I'm suggesting that some of the tendency toward orderliness was inherent in orderly physico-chemical structure, and that the environmental, including chemical, context probably imposed some limits on what could or could not occur in terms of chemical, and eventually, biochemical activity. I'm suggesting that the process could have been entirely natural. I'm also clearly stating that I DO NOT KNOW how the process occurred that resulted in replicating molecules. If I did, I'd be glad to share with you some of my Nobel prize award money.
"with the beginning of the universe, time itself was created." Really? Which universe? Which Bang? which anticendent? Which time?
"matter and space did not exist before the beginning of Universe." As above...
"....our own moral make-up" Yep. Great. Strange how people have spent days on my sin blog telling me how bad our moral make up really is! Does not the "moral make up" of this world have equall say on that point anyway? We've been there before: nature, red in tooth and....
"..what is revealed to us through Jesus Christ..." mmm back to the bible cicule again.
Darrel, all four of your points are based on theories about the universe, and reading into them seeking a desired outcome.
Your last one is dependent on a person who is historically unlikely to have existed in NT proportions.
Thus a creation event is incredibly solid science.
I watched a YouTube debate between Bart Ehrman and a Christian apologist the other day. Every time the Christian guy spoke he opened with a quote, source, reference. I thought of you Darrel.
Bart opened every segment with reasoned evidence, research of his own, well analysed data.
I don't want to be disrespectful, but you are like a vending machine at times; push the right buttons and you dispense the "authoritative" data to match. Never mind that in reality it may not be valid, thought out, etc.
I really wish I had not contributed to the points above that got you on ID, because it is just so pointless. As I have said before, I have sympathy for ID, but I point blank refuse to take it beyond where its weak evidence leads.
Whatever makes you happy I guess:)
As a scientific rube myself, I have often asked/wondered who/what put/wrote the information into the genetic code. Obviously I don’t understand. (Frankly, I wouldn’t understand any explanation anyway.)
Already plenty of Christian churches openly adopted evolution. Are more people going to those churches? Not really, on the contrary that churches are dyeing.
To believe that a highly educated scientific person could not really believe in the content of the Bible is just an arrogant statement and shows a deep ignorance of the reality.
Many commenters here are obviously bright people. Certainly David, Chris, 22OCT, Nate, Ervin, Earl, Darrel, Elaine, Andy, and others, are all capable and articulate people. Of course, we focus on different sources of evidence, and we evaluate evidence differently. I hope our discussions help each of us to more carefully consider evidence and opinions, and maybe we can each grow and learn in constructive ways that help us understand how the truth can set us free. Truth is not our foe. Ignorance is our enemy.
Now, for those who so often claim to know that there is not a speck of evidence on the topic, let me provide a link to a recent paper. I hope this link will work, and, if not, one can enter a manual search.
Perelman, et al., (2011) "A Molecular Phylogeny of Living Primates." PLoS Genetics
www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1001342
Here’s the intellectual integrity challenge/problem that Christians who rely on revelations from scientific observation refuse to confront: it doesn’t take a terminal degree in biology to understand that dead people cannot be revived by voice. What do they do with Lazarus’s resurrection? What do they do with Jesus’ resurrection?
Did these ‘events’ actually happen or not? If some scientific observing Christians believe that Jesus was just another dude; then they have some explaining to do—to themselves.
Stephen, yours is a very good question. Some things are a lot easier to believe than others.
So, when a charismatic preacher from Texas claims to have brought back people in Uganda from the dead, in the name of Jesus, of course, is that believable? When a physician in Ohio pounds a person (who has apparently died, breathing and pulse seem to have stopped) on the chest and their heart resumes beating and they begin breathing again, all in the presence of witnesses, is that a mysterious miracle? Remember, magic and magicians and magical thinking were popular back in biblical times, and, of course, these are still with us to some extent.
Scientists and religionists all need to remember that their explanations of phenomena are not necessarily accurate. "Explainable" versus "unexplainable" doesn't give too much assurance of veracity. Many "explanations" are not valid. Of course you are correct that those folks "have have some 'splainin' to do." But don't count on the explanations being satisfactory or accurate.
Are they adherents to an ideology or a religion; a philosophy or a faith?
If they adhere to a philosophy as opposed to a faith; would they prefer that it become a philosophy for all?
There are Christians who look to scientific observation to interpret whether what God says He did is literally true or not.
They have to explain to themselves how it is possible for Jesus to have been conceived without human sperm and resurrected from death, when scientific observation tells us that these things cannot be literally true.
Of course, the Christian faith is about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus—a philosophy of Christianity is something else.
Christians of any belief system (or non-Christians, for that matter), can examine objective evidence and are free to accept (or not) that tangible evidence in the real world may present a more accurate picture of reality than is provided by religious writings and traditions.
Jerry Coyne and the "Fact" of Evolution
by Kyle Butt, M.A.Dr. Jerry Coyne is recognized in atheistic circles as one of, if not the, leading evolutionary biologists in the world. He has written a book, Why Evolution Is True, that leading atheists such as Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens have widely endorsed. Allegedly, Dr. Coyne has compiled an insurmountable case for evolution.
On closer inspection, however, one begins to see serious flaws with Coyne's "evidence" and his mode of reasoning. One of his most serious deficiencies is the way in which he equivocates the term evolution. Equivocation is a classic tool of dishonest argument in which a person gives a term multiple meanings and then uses the term in a different sense than is correct. For instance, suppose a person were to say: "I'm holding nothing in my hand, and nothing is stronger than God. So what I have in my hand is stronger than God." Anyone listening to the statement understands that there is some type of "sleight of hand" at play. The rub lies in the multiple meanings of the word nothing. In the first instance, it means "non-existence," and in the second instance, it means "of the things that do exists, not one fits the category." Thus, the logical fallacy of equivocation is one that often muddles the issue at hand.
Throughout Coyne's book he abuses the term evolution, defining it in multiple ways and equivocating it. For instance, he states: "Evolution is a fact" (2009, p. xiii). What does he mean by the term evolution? That is the question. In some places, he defines the term as the idea that all life arose by naturalistic processes from "a single naked replicating molecule" (p. 233). According to that definition, evolution most certainly is not a fact for many reasons, not the least of which is that life cannot arise from non-living "molecules" (see Miller, 2012). In other places, however, Coyne defines the term in ways that any creation scientist would freely acknowledge to be true.
For instance, on page 180, Coyne discusses experiments in which biologists force "animals or plants to adapt through evolution to different environments.... After a period of adaptation, the different 'populations' are tested in the lab to see if they have evolved reproductive barriers." Notice that in this instance of the use of the term "evolution," Coyne simply means a process by which organisms can change slightly to adapt to their environment. Few, if any, creationists would argue that animals do not adapt based on their environment and built-in genetic flexibility. The fact that animals can adapt and change to a certain degree is quite different from the idea that all life arose from a single molecule. Carefully watch the argument then. Evolution is seen in a lab (minor adaptations), thus we must admit that evolution (molecules to man) is true. Such equivocation from one of the leading proponents of evolution should alert the critical reader to a serious deficiency in the molecules-to-man aspect of the term evolution.
Again, on page 217, Coyne talks about human "evolution" that we can envision occurring. He mentions that one human allele called CCR5-∆32 "provides its carriers with strong protection against infection with the AIDS virus." He then states, "We can predict that if AIDS continues as a significant source of mortality, the frequency of this allele will rise in affected populations. That's evolution, as surely as is antibiotic resistance in bacteria." Notice again the equivocation. No creationist (to my knowledge) has any problem recognizing the existence of certain alleles that might proffer a certain benefit to those humans that have them. Nor would the spread of those alleles throughout portions of the human population militate against anything proposed by the creation model. By terming this process as "evolution," Coyne then says that we know evolution (molecules to man) is true.
At one point in his book, Coyne tacitly admits what he is doing. On page 143, he states:
True, breeders haven't turned a cat into a dog, and laboratory studies haven't turned bacterium into an amoeba (although, as we've seen, new bacterial species have arisen in the lab). But it is foolish to think that these are serious objections to natural selection. Big transformations take time-huge spans of it. To really see the power of selection, we must extrapolate the small changes that selection creates in our lifetime over the millions of years that it has really had to work in nature.
While he does not openly admit to equivocating the term evolution, he does differentiate between what is actually seen in the laboratory (and in nature), and what we must "extrapolate" from what we see. In reality, his "extrapolation" of "big transformations" is the antiscientific idea of molecules-to-man evolution. Were he to stop where the evidence stops, he would be forced to say that small changes-about which both creationists and evolutionists agree-have not been shown to render "big transformations" (for more information on this fact, see Butt, 2006; Butt 2008; Thompson and Harrub, 2002; Thompson, 1994).
Coyne's use of the logical fallacy of equivocation belies the inherent weakness of the theory of evolution that he attempts to defend. No legitimate, factual scientific evidence has ever been produced that remotely substantiates the concept that a single replicating molecule evolved into a human over millions of years of mindless, materialistic processes. Were we to stick only with what we know to be fact, we would be forced to conclude, as the late atheist-turned-believer Antony Flew commented: "The only satisfactory explanation for the origin of such 'end-directed, self-replicating' life as we see on earth is an infinitely intelligent Mind (2007, p. 132).
REFERENCES
Butt, Kyle (2006), "What Do the Finches Prove?," Apologetics Press, http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=9&article=1652.
Butt, Kyle (2008), "Mutant Fruit Flies Bug Evolution," Apologetics Press,http://www.apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=9&article=2501.
Coyne, Jerry (2009), Why Evolution Is True (New York: Viking).
Flew, Antony and Roy Varghese (2007), There Is A God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (New York: Harper One).
Miller, Jeff (2012), "The Law of Biogenesis (Part 1)," Apologetics Press,http://www.apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=12&article=4165.
Thompson, Bert (1994), "Bacterial Antibiotic Resistance-Proof of Evolution?," Apologetics Press,http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=9&article=572.
Thompson, Bert and Brad Harrub (2002), "Fifteen Answers to Scientific American's Nonsense," Apologetics Press,http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=9&article=1350.
David, I just have mention that experimental science is intended to nail down cause and effect relationships, while epidemiological evidence is mostly correlative. Of course, in epidemiology, multiple regression and other methods attempt to establish the variation in one variable that is "accounted for" by other variables. But, of course, you are correct that we attempt to identify the probabilities and levels of confidence of our results, rejections of null hypotheses, etc.
"Nic provides a classic illustration of why many educated individuals take those speaking from what is insisted to be a 'Christian' perspective with such little regard."
"Nic's repsonse is the classic one: 'Almost everyone else is wrong and my little group is right.'...I'm just pointing out the obvious fact that this is the view often expressed by those holding minority views."
Thank you, Erv, for providing such excellent examples of liberal fundamentalism - adolescent, sneering condescension toward those who question the conventional wisdom of your scientist clique. I shall take great relish in trying to point out more examples as they arise, in the fervent hope that liberals, who presumably wish to avoid the fundamentalist label, might become more conscious of the ubiquitousness of the fundamentalist urge and, in trying to suppress that urge, thereby help to elevate the dialogue on AToday.
How does one appropriately respond to such an inspiring and elevated comment from a generous Christian gentleman?
Joe, you may not like to be confronted with the ugly truth about liberal fundamentalism, and its haughty dismissiveness toward those who are not members of the club. You again demonstrate liberal fundamentalism by snarkily implying that, because my comment is mean and unChristian, its accuracy is irrelevant. But another much finer Christian Gentleman than I once referred to those who sneered at His questioning of the conventional wisdom as "white-washed sepulchres;" "den of vipers;" and "children of your father, the Devil." Indeed, how does one appropriately respond to the mirror of truth?
I'm fine with agreeing to disagree. You have every right to believe anything you can.
concurred that there were small adaptations in various species, because of environmental influences, and or specimens living on other nearby islands, some with red collar hair, others grey, and other small decifierable variations, but no big changes in the species, and certainly no large structural changes, and or dramatic species change. Lemurs were still lemurs, orangatans were still, yep, orangatans, etc etc, and this was studying these primate groups over a span of up to approx 200 million years.
Interesting, that it was thought these specimans were of Asian origin, whereas i thought the human species were thought to be of lower Africa, Lucy?
One of the most interesting to me is the very long separation of tarsiers from other primates. They are now found only in Philippines, Sulawesi (Indonesia), and Borneo (Malaysia & Indoonesia), although fossils from about 40 million years ago are found as far away as southern Germany.
There is a lot there to digest, Earl. It is pretty cool that ancestral tarsiers and lemurs go back that far and are recognizable as similar to surviving forms. But also, the first specimens of each surviving lineage occurred mostly at different times, and some of the specimens are not like any surviving lines.
I think we just have to use whatever information that can be found to try to figure out when and where things happened. I think this paper gives a good glimpse of how that process works. Again, Earl, thanks for having a look at the paper. Similar papers exist for elephants, whales, horses, and many other vertebrates and invertebrates. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence to consider.
Make of it what you will, but remember that it is there when someone proclaims that there is "not a shred of evidence."
If I have to express in a nutshell the SDA believes I’ll use revelation 14:6.7. This text has been the cornerstone since the genesis of the SDA church, (few years before the publication of Darwin’s book).
Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth—to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people— saying with a loud voice, “Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.”
The last universal divine message to mankind calls specifically to worship God not because is good, great or merciful redeemer, but because is the Creator. Intriguing indeed.
Furthermore the sentence “made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.” Is the longest sentence word by word barrowed from the Old Testament in the book of Revelation and is coming from the 4th commandment “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”
Is possible that God knew that His distinctive characteristic was going to be in question just before His second coming?
Is just pure coincidence the genesis of both movements appeared almost simultaneously?
Lindblad-Toh, Kerstin, et al. "A high-resolution map of human evolutionary constraint using 29 mammals." Nature (27 OCT 2011)
www.nature.com/nature/journal/v478/n7370/full/nature10530.html
[more of the abundant nontrivial evidence]
How did Jesus' death make it possible to save mankind? Does that not mean that all those before that time cannot be saved? And what about the millions who will be among the redeemed who never heard of a man called Jesus?
One of my problems is with the various detailed concepts people have about this mysterious story--with the seeming to know things that they cannot really know. Much of the meaning people see in this story seems artificially injected, that is, made up. So, my attitude is this: Believe whatever you wish (you will anyway); but please don't tell me I "need to admit" something just because that is what you are able to believe.
Yes, the life and mission of Jesus is mysterious, but theologians have made it even more mysterious than is needed. I do not believe that God demanded that his Only Son die in order to grant the Lord the right to forgive sins. The Angel Gabriel predicted that Mary's Son would sit on David's throne forever. This evidently did not take place! Why? The answer is quite simple: There was another prediction stating that he would die. Both predeictions were contingent on human response. The future of Jesus was in the hands of the Jewish leaders, and they made the wrong choice.
The story of the "fall" is all part of the belief in Jesus as the One who can remove that curse. This is why both are intimately connected. Like you, I cannot believe in this concept but it is inherent in Christianity which is why discussion of mortality, the fall, and the need for removal of the curse is the essential story presented by Christians.
Rather than the depravity of man, I prefer to accept that the majority of people are living lives that are of service to others and exhibit that care. It is only the few that live life's of violence and depravity that sells newpapers and TV ads.
You see what you look for.
First off, I’ve found that Nate’s sometimes lovable qualities are often shrouded over by his rhetorical gifts. I was going to say rhetorical excesses, but, of course, those excesses are what give them their most fascinating, if questionable, quality.
Nate suggests that these quotations are “excellent examples of liberal fundamentalism.” And then states his understanding of the principal characteristic of liberal fundamentalism. In his view, it involves “adolescent, sneering condescension toward those who question the conventional wisdom of your scientist clique.”
I must admit puzzlement with Nate’s comment in that he apparently has determined that the standard dictionary definitions of “liberal” and “fundamentalism” are inadequate for his purposes and thus he has determined to use this coined phrase to apply in a kind of generic sense to anything to which he takes an instinctive dislike.
This is an excellent rhetorical strategy since it provides an appearance of being balanced by opposing both “extremes” of fundamentalism.
I was going to cite the dictionary definitions of “liberal” and “fundamentalism” taken from some standard scholarly source. However, I forgot that, first, Nate has already decided not to use the conventional meanings of those words and second, I suspect that he would consider any scholarly source as being under the control of a “scientist clique.”
However, in the next segment of this topic, it will be instructive to consider the interesting point Nate has bought up about the possibility of there being “liberal fundamentalists” and what to reasonable people that phrase might mean.
I'm trying very hard to find a way of making Nate's concept palatable, but he does seem to use "liberal" in some sort of pejorative sense that may rule out almost anything thoughtful, considerate, sensible, or evidence based, so I'd better let him speak for himself. I already seem to rub him the wrong way, whether I mean to or not. His rhetoric is so reminiscent or Spiro Agnew. I wonder if that is deliberate.
No, "Liberal" is not necessarily pejorative, though "fundamentalist" is. "Liberal" has become a confusing term, because "liberal," in the sense of being to the left on the political spectrum, bears little resmblance to "liberal" in the classical sense of openness to new ideas and new ways of thinking. I am really indebted to Fritz Guy - hardly a conservative - for the term "liberal fundamentalist." He has observed that there are both liberal fundamentalists and conservative fundamentalists. And I think there is a cluster of similarcharacteristics associated with both. I have not heard Fritz Guy define either, so my characterization is largely intuitive.
By prescriptively using the dictionary, Erv, you definitionally render the phrase "liberal fundamentalist" oxymoronic. To me, the principle characteristic of a fundamentalist is reasoning within a closed world view, the limitations of which the fundamentalist is very reluctant to acknowledge. This tends the fundamentalist toward arrogance and dogmatism when confronted with challenges to his conclusions. He insists that his conclusions are based on universal reason and logic rather than on a priori assumptions. Fundamentalists often misrepresent the position of their opponent to divert attention and set up a straw man argument.
In fact, Erv, you just did this. You spun my words - "excellent example of liberal fundamentalism" - into "principal characteristic of liberal fundamentalism." Those are two very different things, as you certainly realize. But, by subtle morphing of what I actually said into something I did not say and do not believe, you attempted to render my statement an easier target. I doubt that you were even conscious of what you were doing.
In debate, conservative fundamentalists try to invalidate liberal positions by attacks on their motivations, piety and orthodoxy. Liberal fundamentalists try to invalidate conservative positions by attacking the motivations, intelligence and morality of conservatives. Both seem oblivious to the reality that personally denigrating one's opponent or the group with which he/she identifies is intellectually vacuous. You can readily see, Erv, that the three quotes from you that I used have absolutely no intellectual content and advance no substantive idea. Yet they obviously made you feel smug in your own world.
Of course we all regrettably do this from time to time. But for the fundamentalist, it seems to be an addiction - a habit of the mind. Somehow, denigrating those who are of a different "religion" makes the fundamentalist feel more secure in smug, knowing self-righteousness. And I don't see much evidence that liberals are less prone to it than conservatives.
In my view they are both supernatural because the probability for both events (occuring naturally) is basically ZERO.
Don't stop there Stephen. How long has God (who was charged capricious and arbitrary when he refused to grant Lucifer a seat at the creation tribunal) allowed Lucifer to prove himself fit to sit "as god" via ability to create/recreate? Is this not the question at the crux?
Evolution as origin concept negates the supernatural at least in "shallow time"-why does the supernatural creation myth (for the fundamental literalist at least)negate deep time, long earth or non-origins evolution? Clearly, there is evidence to suggest evolution is a real phenomenon-but science can make no claim it only improves the species or improves survivability (except perhaps in not sufficiently longitudinal studies) any more than religion can claim evolution does not exist.
The nature and the claim of the Great Controversy (the fitness of God to be creator), does this NOT neccesitate that God allows every opportunity-including deep time-to answer his case for deepest time (eternity)? To constrain God to 6 days, and 6 millenia, perhaps is itself not an accurate testimony. Certainly to treat with condescencion, acrimony or disdain as lost those people who hold differing views regarding creation in 6 literal days (or resurrection in "3" days) is egregious wrong. Such a position which my faith community has sadly-and too proudly, to its detriment- expended great effort and not little fanfare.
Perhaps the greater needful question is not whether God is capable as biochemist/geneticist to create man and his little rock in 6 days, or recreate himself in 3, but whether we befuddled lot can comprehend and share Him. Too often seems we desire less to share, more to own.
Even the rocks will cry out the truth, even if we cannot. What are they saying?
Peter:
"the ressurection of a person and the 'evolution' of the first cell both are very similar events.
In my view they are both supernatural because the probability for both events (occuring naturally) is basically ZERO...
Stephen: "This is the point that I have been trying to articulate…or insinuate…in this forum for quite some time!"
May I suggest you are both falling prey to Hoyles Fallacy, and a false understanding of Borel's Law.
You should rather examine the Law of large numbers.
We have probably all seen the creationist maths sequence where they take the "chance" of the formation of the first cell or the like and work out its mathematical chance of taking place.
You will find they use the example, and give the answer to the power of 10 etc, as though "one" coin, or sequence was being "flipped" at a time. ie, one or two precursor acids, or whatever, in one puddle. Doing this they can end up with probabilities so low that people like Peter and Stephen can be sucked right in.
What they do not do, is calculate using a method that is more likely accurate: Millions or billions of "coins" being "flipped" at once!! If you want to get a highly unlikely sequence, requiring a vast number of flips - just get the population of China flipping coins, and you will have your sequence pronto!
May I suggest you two let this sink in: The Law of Large Numbers is important because it "guarantees" stable long-term results for random events.
To say the likelyhood of a resurrection and the first cell are equally near zero is absurd. The cell is not Zero, and LLN suggests an outcome can, perhaps, will happen.
Resurrection! Why do you put it above zero? You are saying that a simple cell, probably far simpler than we imagine, has the same chance as a complex organism defying all laws of nature and coming back to life is equall? Surely, there is an infinitely greater chance of the former than the latter! So, if you are going to put "resurrection" above zero, you better follow logic and put a simple cell way up the scale!
If you want a detailed read on these, look up LLN, and also see: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html
Chris,
I actually understood Peter to be saying that the chances of non-living matter spontaneously converting into a living cell (or cells), as well as the chances for all of the dead cells of a totally dead human being revitalized (by voice command at that) are both “basically ZERO.”
It is apparent to me that you perhaps heard him say something else entirely.
Here's a great link illustrating order from disorder..read down part way the paper clip and bolt experiment:
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/philosop/design.htm
Timo, perhaps Cain's problem with Abel was not just bringing the wrong sacrifice, but insane jealousy of a younger sibling being constantly praised, and him having to do all the heavy work. Similarly, perhaps Lucifer, being the gorgeous knockout, excelling in all the arts, able to sing all parts of music simultaneously, being lauded by all the lower class angels, jealously demanded a seat at the table. When refused, he silently brooded, and when the Father gave Jesus the authority to put Lucifer in his subordinate place, all hell broke loose, Lucifer sealed his doom, and mankind has been paying the price to this day. We find the probation period hard to understand, and the resultant carnage of billions of years, however, God being eternal, the time frame of man is almost no time in God's being.
Back to blog theme. If man is the result of a random quirk in space disorder, because a phylogeneous protein, somehow "miraculously" appeared out of the whirling, swirling primordial swamp, whoa-o-o-o, just a moment, did i say "miraculous"? uh, uh, that can't be, that would be supernatural, hmmmm.
Earl, I'm more inclined to use the term "fortuitous" than "miraculous," but maybe there is not so much difference, other than whether scientists feel like they are following the rules of natural science....
I'm guessing that a very small minority of scientists, even evolutionary biologists, have read recent reviews of evidence and thoughts regarding pre-life chemistry as related to emergent life biochemistry. I'm recommending the following source not as something I uncritically accept or believe, but as an example of some current evidence and thought--to be read and given due critical consideration, not as some sort of "proof text." Once again, it seems to counter the assertions about there being "no evidence" to consider.
Irene Chen & Martin Nowak "From Prelife to Life: How Chemical Kinetics Become Evolutionary Dynamics." Accounts of Chemical Research 45(12):2088-2096, 2012.
You can google either author + publications and get a list of pubs, many with PDFs, including this one, or search the title or go to the following:
www.ped.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/publications_nowak/ChenAccChemRes2012.pdf
It is pretty interesting reading.
No, that is not what I mean. What I mean is that based on the evidence and the interpretation of said evidence pro and con, I lean towards creation instead of macro evolution.
Erv, your fundamentalist proclivities are popping out all over. Now you muster them in support of regressive, authoritarian linguistics. At the risk of sounding dogmatic, Erv, you could not be more incorrect. You would find few lexicographers who agree with you, and no logophiles. You refuse the same evolutionary freedom to language that you dogmatically impose on science. What's with that?
Dictionaries are more useful for their descriptive insights than as prescriptive enforcers. Words are important, and become part of our lexicon because of the meanings they convey to listeners and speakers - not because someone decided to put them in a dictionary. We would have no Shakespeare had the bard viewed language as you seem to, Erv. This is really quite rich. Your comment suggests that you believe in intelligent design when it comes to language. I think you've got both your evolutionary theory and your linguistic theory backwards. Random mutation and natural selction is much more evident in language than in nature.
The "educated population" is not necessarily an elitist clique. I am very highly educated, and I disdain elitism. People only tend to form and join elitist cliques when they are seduced by beliefs and ideologies that are out of touch with common sense reality and experience, and want to use those beliefs to control the lives of others.
I seem to have touched a raw nerve by using Fritz Guy's epithet - "liberal fundamentalism." I realize that "fundamentalism" per se is not the topic of the blog. But it might be helpful for you why it is that labeling your comments "excellent examples of liberal fundamentalism does not reveal a truth that has merit, and should be taken seriously. Are you really trying to defend the three quotes I highlighted a couple of days ago?
"I am very highly educated, and I disdain elitism." That, in itself, is rather rich.... The "logophile" part rings true.
That is a great statement I fully agree with!
[I didn'tmean to use bold type.]
"I am very highly educated, and I disdain elitism. ...
People only tend to form and join elitist cliques when they are seduced by beliefs and ideologies that are out of touch with common sense reality and experience, and want to use those beliefs to control the lives of others."
I think it is possible to be so seduced within our own thinking that we cannot even see our own elitism. Similarly, we can rub shoulders so long with such types that natural selection and mutation within our thinking processes render self assessment impossible. In other words, we can be blind to what is clearly obvious to others.
I'm not arguing for the nonenzymatic formation of nucleotides, because I have no real relevant knowledge about that. I'm just advocating the consideration of evidence and/or ideas from people who do have detailed understanding of such matters. No uncritical acceptance, please.
David, let's not put ourselves in adversarial positions. We are both honest people. I'd be interested in knowing more about you and your life and experiences. I can't find out much about you, or read any of your publications, because I do not know your last name. Anyway, even though we are coming at a lot of things from different directions, I appreciate your comments and wish you well.
The respect is mutual and maybe some day we will see each other.
Your point is valid because the key words “ the probability for both events occurring naturally”. Up today science can’t replicate neither of both the events.
Are you saying that the probability of either evcnt (the ressurection of a person and the 'evolution' of the first cell) occurring naturally is equal?
Second question: Which would you say is most likely to occur, the evolution of a first cell from preexisting matter within the universe, OR the existence of a God with neither cause nor anticedent?
But then again, I am neither a scientist nor a mathematician (that’s for sure).
And precisely what, greater than nothing, does that disdainful comment add, Joe? It is such a puerile, immature taunt! Third graders are more honest and direct. They simply say, "You're stupid!" One of the more remarkable features of the AToday dialogue is the reticence of conservative commenters to employ the snarky put-downs to which liberals incontinently resort. Such comments are usually appended to the end of otherwise substantive, interesting observations. It feels like the intent is to make sure that the reader understands that the relative convincing force of the argument is less important than the "obvious" superior intellect and/or moral development of the commenter.
Since the liberals are offended by Fritz Guy's phrase, "liberal fundamentalist," I wonder what phrase they might use to describe comments reflective of a mindset that cuts off discussion with haughty, dismissive contempt. Talk about adding nothing! What would your response to Nic have lost, Joe, had you simply shown the class and restraint to delete the last two sentences from your comment?
Advice for a defense lawyer is to pound on the table when the argument is weak.
Can you not appreciate Nathan's frustration? The pride of a feeble mind wraped in consescending arrogance can be suffocatingly stiffling. Nate is feeling it.
"....beliefs and ideologies that are out of touch with common sense reality and experience, and want[ing] to use those beliefs to control the lives of others."
You have apparently interpreted Peter’s observation in the same way that I have.
To Joe’s point, it seems to me there is a reason when things of zero possibility or chance nonetheless have happened.
We are here.
Has any resurrection occurred? That is, has a completely dead person (a corpse) ever been resuscitated and revitalized? If so, then ‘the case’ is closed.
If any corpse ever was resurrected, then that phenomenon was possible, and might occur again.
Now, has that ever happened? Some believe it has and others don't. Some would require very clear documentation in order to believe, while others could easily believe oral or written reports.
But even if something has never happened in a way that is fully documented, we cannot be absolutely certain it would never happen. Something can be very, very, very unlikely without being assigned a probability of zero--tantamount to claiming it is impossible.
We are here. How or why we are here, we can guess and we can believe we are certain, but we cannot be absolutely certain in the sense of making a convincing objective case.
What should also be a given it seems is that—whatever the chances that preexistent inorganic matter has evolved into us—there is no chance that a completely dead corpse can be revitalized by voice.
If it happened, and might/will happen again, it is only because a supernatural Omnipotence has and can perform the naturally impossible; and can do so by merely speaking.
The only question is has it happened? Christians believe that it has; and that this is/was the proof of God’s existence. It is ultimately a matter of belief.
But we should agree that if it has happened, this would represent irrefutable proof.
Take a 6 sided dice & roll it once, what is your chance of a 5? Do it six times, you'll have a good chance of getting a 5.
If there were a squillion places on earth where molecules were forming simultaneously, the chance of getting a good, protein-producing formation is dramatically increased. Of course, we cannot know the variables, volumes, etc, but neither can we exclude them.
What is important here, is that we do know many of the laws of nature, and, at least on the micro evolutionary level, no one denies that formation and change happens from within variables. Also the weight of natural selection favors certain outcomes over others, thus potentially reducing the odds yet further.
It's a fact of statistics that as the number of opportunities for an event to occur increase, the chance for even a highly improbable event can become a virtual certainty.
Now here's the point re your sentence above. Excluding your "voice" option: what variables do we know about the possibility of a dead corpse coming to life? Scientifically speaking, there appears to be none. The laws of nature dictate against it. Evolution dictates against it because evolution only ever suggests small changes over time. Changes effected, and affected, by the "weight" of selection and environment. To speak of a corpse coming to life is the exact opposite of suggesting a small protein chain, or amino acid formed.
Has the number of "oportunities" for a dead corpse rising increased? Yes! Every death does so. However, the variables have not increased. Not that we can ascertain anyway. Since the first person died to the most recent, there appears to be no change in the laws of nature, the environment, etc. Thus, the "chance" of a corpse coming to life remains the same as if one person or a trillion had died. It is like tossing a dice once and hoping for a 5. The difference is that the number you are hoping for does not appear to be on the dice!!
Yes, the "voice" could be the number you are looking for, but which way do all other indicators point?
Yes, if it were to happen, it would be fantastic proof. It is such a shame that to date there is not a shred of verifiable evidence that the laws of nature have been interrupted in such a manner.
In other words, that which is verifiable to you is completely up to you. You regard the Gospel narratives as fairytales; which it is your right to do.
The point that you seem to grudgingly acknowledge is that if a resurrection of a dead corpse (as if there is any other kind), by voice—as in those of Lazarus and Jesus the Christ—has taken place, it would represent “fantastic proof” (I take that to mean undeniable proof) of the existence of the Omnipotent; or at least of an Intelligence infinitely more knowledgeable about nature than we are..
(By the way, it isn’t my “voice option.” I did not write the narratives.)
It certainly could be a pointer in the God direction, but it could also be the "God of the gaps". Thunderstorms used to be "proof" of God's existence and activity once! There may come a point in time at which even a resurrection can be explained with clear data. Thus, if someone did rise from the dead, what in fact does it demonstrate? It would certainly be "proof" it can happen, but how/why/what would be open.
As for the narratives. You didn't write them, but some other human did. Most of whom had relatively little scientific understanding, and thought the storm was enough to prove God was hangin around! Now you need a resurrection. (for example) What in 2000yrs time?
However an argument that the resurrections that are described in the gospels, if true, would not represent undeniable and irrefutable proof of God’s existence is itself not credible.
Many smiles for you, Earl.... Also, David, Chris, Nate, Elaine, Stephen, Nic, Erv, and others. I feel and hope we are all friends, each in his/her own honest way.
I appreciate that frustration. I generally find that the experts I utilize in trial - and even my physician clients - have far more impressive c.v.'s than those of experts retained by the plaintiff"s attorney. I often wish we could try the case by simply weighing the respective c.v.'s. But I can't do that. I hope that, when the jury sees the superior qualifications of my expert, they will be predisposed to give his/her opinions greater weight. But it is ultimately my expert's ability to persuasively analyze data and communicate complex information to an audience of lay jurors that will win the case. It would be unthinkable for a trial expert to display personal haughtiness or smug arrogance toward the other side, or to personally disparage the intellectual honesty of the plaintiff's evidence. That would be suicidal - at least if the goal is to persuade.
I am loathe to engage in the psychopunditry to which some folks default in order to avoid dealing with an argument. But I can't help wondering what motivates some commenters and bloggers to indulge in self-defeating comments, that only elicit cheers from the choir, and turn off any open-minded reader (myself, of course, being the prototype of an open-minded reader (lol)). And I am a bit frustrated that, rather than offering an explanation or justification for the comments that prompted my protest, Erv and others have attempted to divert attention to the issue of whether fundamentalism must be narrowly confined to a religious movement, or whether it might also more broadly connote a demand for strict adherence to any system of belief or ideology. If the latter definition is reasonable, then can't we all acknowledge that liberals, as well as conservatives, are vulnerable to fundamentalist temptation
Thank you for setting the tone for an honest intellectual exchange without skirting the issues or off-the- cuff [drive-by "shooting"] comments.
If Nate wishes for us all to agree that liberals as well as conservatives are vulnerable to the temptation of displaying "personal haughtiness or smug arrogance toward the other side," he certainly has my agreement. Now that we have that settled (I hope), what is the fuss really about?
-----------
My answer would be that ‘liberals’ won't readily admit that they are often just as fundamentalist as some conservatives - and perhaps even more extreme at times in their rigid adherence to their beliefs and convictions which is largely governed and driven by their field of expertise or vocation and their socio-political standing. In my opinion they are constantly in denial of this.
22, have you not shot yourself in the foot above?
eg "...their rigid adherence to their beliefs and convictions which is largely governed and driven by their field of expertise or vocation and their socio-political standing."
Wow, yes. Have you ever tried to argue with a mathematician that 2+2 does not = 4? Have you ever had them adhere rigidly to their convictions, based on the fact that it is their field of expertise, that you are WRONG? Ever called them a fundamentalist, simply for trying to point out your error? Of course not.
It does seem strange here on AT, that so often people who are experts in some field or another are howled down by those who are not expert in the field. And when these folk persist in reasons why they hold their conviction out comes the name calling: Liberal Fundamentalist!! blah blah ....etc.
No, seems to me the fuss is that you guys like the term because it enables people to look at the pot and call it black to deflect the need for self assessment.
You side-tracked in your argument by accusing me of questioning factual provable stuff like the 2+2 sum but failed to take notice that I wasn't talking about real empirical science stuff but the philosophical bias force fed into it.
For example: Let's get your mathematician out of the classroom at La Sierra who rigidly believes, teaches and supports evolution theory. He insists that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old. He is aware of the fact that scientists have established that the Earth's rotation is gradually slowing down, even at a fraction, but slowing down nonetheless. If this rate of slowing down was constant for the 4.6 billion years, then a much faster rotating Earth would have had major problems with at least frequent daily catastrophic occurrences with regards to the ebb and flow of sea tides. Now I'm sure our mathematician will be very accurate (and correct) in his 2+2 calculation of the speed of Earth's rotation eons ago but to ignore the implications of such a calculation and holding to a philosophical belief does qualify him as fundamentalist in this regard. Thus their accurate mathematical calculations are marred by their fundamentalist worldview and belief which I might add is also largely due to indoctrination.
It is therefore the philosophical assumptions they believe and accept as fact which they are fundamentalist about. It is this belief system that is fundamentalist. They, of course, will religiously say that their beliefs are right. It is also an undeniable fact that evolutionists believe they are right.
Yes, I will admit getting shot in the foot; but it was from your drive-by.
"In denial"? where on earth do you get your information from? AIG perhaps? Or is it the All Bl**#!...Nonsense chanel?
"...evolution theory is the right one and extrapolates its many assumptions and non-empirical metaphysical views and philosophies as scientific fact"
....?
Perhaps you can give a list of philosophical assumptions...oh, but hang on, those are "assumptions" about "origins", and evolution is not about that, so what is your point?
Perhaps I could begin to sound stubborn, frustrated, and authoritarian. Perhaps even arrogant. But let me, at risk of doing so, say it again. Evolution does not deal with abiogenesis. Did you get that, or shall I say it again.
Creation is a theory of abiogenesis. Evolution does not need such a theory. We are here; that is where it begins its work. It only sets out to explain how life has evolved over time.
Please read the following:
Pasteur and Darwin
By the middle of the 19th century, the theory of biogenesis had accumulated so much evidential support, due to the work of Louis Pasteur and others, that the alternative theory of spontaneous generation had been effectively disproven. Pasteur himself remarked, after a definitive finding in 1864, "Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow struck by this simple experiment."[11][12]
In a letter to Joseph Dalton Hooker on February 1, 1871,[13] Charles Darwin addressed the question, suggesting that the original spark of life may have begun in a "warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present, so that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes". He went on to explain that "at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed."[14] In other words, the presence of life itself makes the search for the origin of life dependent on the sterile conditions of the laboratory."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#Pasteur_and_Darwin
Ah, so evolution is not just about survival of the fittest: It's about arrival of the fittest too?
I do not see evolution as being very much about "survival of the fittest." That phrase seems to suggest a kind of perfectionism (and a level of combative competition) that does not seem to me to reflect reality. The reality, it seems to me, is that functionally adequate individuals and populations survive. Those that are functionally inadequate survive much less well. Sometimes relative superiority conveys some advantage, but other times, not so much.
It isn't all about competition. Cooperation can also be quite important. I see in evolution much more adaptation to environmental variation and opportunistic entry into, and exploitation, of ecological niches--and the consequences of such adaptations into niche separated populations, and eventual separation into populations that no longer interbreed, that is, are reproductively isolated from each other.
It seems to me that variation occurs at every functional level of organization, and, to the extent that is so, the potential exists for selection as adequately or inadequately functional (not to ignore that selection can be positive or negative, and even neutral).
Most scientists are not focused on evolutionary processes all the way from the beginning of what we might call "first life." Most of their efforts are on some era or some taxonomic group. Those who study the natural history of elephants of canines or primates are not likely to have a deep knowledge of the origins of single-cell life or thoughts and evidence regarding early multicellular organisms.
It probably is not quite accurate to draw a bright line between studies of evolution of DNA-based life and possible pre-DNA chemistry. The existence of an "RNA world" prior to the development of DNA-based life has been suggested and experimentally studied for more than 40 years--in which ribozymes, rather than enzymes, were critical participants.
And I think it is really misleading to think of the world and universe as totally chaotic prior to the origins of DNA or even RNA. Haven't chemicals always had some orderly physical structures and some physical characteristics that enabled nonrandom patterns of interaction? It would be inaccurate to say that nothing is known about how things might have been before life as we know it began. Thousands of experimental studies of these issues have been conducted and reported, and many are freely available on line.
Now, none of this needs to threaten anyone's faith, and I do not offer this information as a challenge to your faith. But I do think people of faith should not set themselves up for disappointment by specifying the way God must have, or must not have, done things.
We, who have been raised in the adventist tradition, should be able to appreciate, that, as a people, we have repeatedly set ourselves up for disappointment, and there is a sense in which disappointment can be a self-inflicted wound.
Noted that, Joe. I had to reread your statement "some with vetebrates" and had a little chuckle. Its good to have backbone! BTW my daughter is graduate marine biologist and working towards her dual doctorate in that and psychology. I suppose she desires to do psychotherapy, on porpoise! Or not, as she is focused on invertebrates...
You raise an interesting question with your inquiry and statement "Haven't chemicals always had some orderly physical structures and some physical characteristics that enabled nonrandom patterns of interaction? It would be inaccurate to say that nothing is known about how things might have been before life as we know it began."
Presumption that chemicals, and their orderly interactions occurred "prior to life". Can science make such a claim? I do not believe science can answer the origin of non-life either.
What are we left with, given chemicals-and life- DO exist in this incredible symphony of fractals and chaos and order and predictability and serendipitous unpredictablity and unidentified confounding factors? Lets dig up more questions, and re-test the possible conclusions!
I suppose one can speculate endlessly about what existed before everything was spoken into existence, but if nonlife existed before life existed, does it not seem fairly likely that there was nonliving chemistry? I don't think I see anyone suggesting that everything came from nothing, or am I wrong about that?
Making seems too little levity, with much brevity re the psychotherapy on porpoise, Joe. Sorry!
Yes her emphasis is on invertebrates. The psychology degree plays less into that field, except it has her keen interest, and undoubtedly will further her desire to teach in postgraduate academia.
My point less that anyone here-least of all yourself- is suggesting that chemistry came on its own, without cause, but that the only answer of any kind that mankind has is the unmoved mover of God. That recorded human history begins, and persists with creation myth (perhaps despite, or because of attempt to falsify it) suggestive of some merit perhaps. I believe I know you are agnostic on such, and I personally believe this is a healthy genesis for a reasonable faith, certainly moreso than the imho illegitimate attempts we've all seen using various methods to discredit anyone who dare question the tired hand me down predigested standard narratives.
Are we so afraid of our faith and its foundations we fear to even "COME, AND REASON?" Sometimes I cry, believing we are too stupid to see we are too smart for our own good!
Stephen, you said: "Has any resurrection occurred? That is, has a completely dead person (a corpse) ever been resuscitated and revitalized? If so, then ‘the case’ is closed."
What is the probability that Jesus was resurrected? According to modern science: Zero! According to those who witnessed the event: 1.
What then are the chances of it happening again, in a new 'heaven and earth' (i.e. new universe), sometime in the future? We probably don't really know, but again both theists (think of Pierre de Chardin) and atheists (thinking of Dawkins and Hawkins and their multiverses) seem to accept the possibility if not probability.
So with these mysteries, of creation out of nothing, and a new future creation, why are we so dogmatic to outright reject things based on the little sandbox we live in here? No one is talking about the resurrection of old bodies in the way many might be thinking, insofar as the scriptures themselves make clear that the resurrection involves new 'heavenly bodies', as if a fish could understand the body and environment of a bird.
Science can't tell us about that future any more than it can tell us about the past re what existed before the Big Bang, because as science is based on observation, there was nothing to observe - not even time and space itself! Within that context the resurrection is not as crazy as it sounds - certainly no crazier than some of the last cosmological theories of award-winning atheist scientists.
Speaking life back into an inanimate corpse is something only the Omnipotent could/can do.
If we cannot agree on that, then to Nathan’s point to Elaine below, it would not make a difference (to those who would not agree) whether there were dozens of eyewitnesses to these events or not; because nothing would suffice as evidence.
We have faith in the up and the down quarks, not because we have direct observation, but because of the evidential inferences are so strong that we know our faith is secure in there existance. The same is true with God and The Resurrection of Jesus. If God however, overwelmed us with evidence then there remains no room for choose. So the way God regulates the knowledge of Himself keeps us free, but provides enough evidence that if we are not affraid to believe then we can.
As Pascal put it, “willing to appear only to those who seek him wih a;; their heart, and to be hidden from those who flee from him with all their heart, he so regulates the knowledge of himself that he has given indications of himself which are visible to those who seek him and not to those who don not seek him. There is enough light for those to see who desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have contrary disposition."
Tennyson capures one way to understand the relationship between faith and evidence in "The Ancient Sage" 1885
"For nothing worth proving can be proven, nor yet disproven: wherefore thou be wise my son, cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt."
If we abide by the strictist interpretation of the word 'evidence,' then the above is good advise, for for strictly speaking we can not prove anything.
I think this "critique of pure reason," unreasonable. I believe we really can know things, and somethings are logical extentions of what we do know--Faith!
“Ah, so evolution is not just about survival of the fittest: It's about arrival of the fittest too?”
That is comical! I had a good laugh… Well don’t be surprise; some people will consider all possible alternatives how life began in earth except GOD. Already the most well know of them, the vociferous Dawkins, in one interview gave the credit to “green ET”. So what is next the “Grinch”?
Confusing subjective belief with objective evidence shows the paucity of logic in one's mental capacities. Or, is it a lack of studing logic and critical thinking?
Respect is due those whose belief does not demand others accept their subjective reasons. While those who expect others to accept their subjective beliefs as objective evidence for everyone are living in an illusory world.
Let see, miss using that umbrella, some people express a lot of thinking with paucity of been “critical” and others a plethora of criticism with little thinking.
I am a believer in the story of Christ, his death and resurrection, and his teachings. Not because they are "true" in any verifiable sense, but because I like them. It's an allegory that reveals a concept of God that removes him from the realm of super dad. Christ spoke of God as love. In this chaotic universe where planets, stars and galaxies are continually being destroyed and created by the great mix master of gravity, there is a something that is not affected by laws of physics, gravity, or other forces. It is knowable in my heart and life
Is concretion of religious concepts too-oft mistaken for faith?
Did Jesus present his faith through such concretions?
The ensuing reversal (if its concretion, its true) suggests that if scientific 'truth' cannot be extruded through said religious concretion, it must not be 'truth'.
Given that philosophical arguments regarding truth predate Jesus, why did he not speak directly to these things? Seems where Jesus was mute is where man rails loudest...
While fictional literature is not objectively true; works of art are all true art, aren’t they? Is this what you intended to communicate?
Jesus is/was not a work of art.
"In the absence of any witnesses, there cannot be evidence"
Am I missing something Elaine? Perhaps I've just spent too much of my life hearing juries instructed that circumstantial evidence is entitled to as much - often more - weight than direct evidence.
Would it make any difference to you, Elaine, if there were eye witnesses? Which of the many witnessed miracles reported in the Bible do you believe to be true?
By the way, in view of your new standard of proof - eyewitness testimony - I'm curious... just who has reported witnessing evolution?
"Respect is due those whose belief does not demand that others accept their subjective reasons."
Who do you know, Elaine, that expects you to accept their subjective beliefs as evidence? Now that would be illusory! The only ones I know are those who have political power. And last I knew, you love it when they impose their subjective beliefs on me (Oh yes, I forgot...my bad. There I go - "confusing subjective belief with objective evidence.") I'm beginning to understand, Elaine. Would it be fair to say that the best default position for us conservatives, if we want to avoid exposure of our mental deficiencies, is to accept what you, and other bien pensants on this website, say as objective evidence-based belief? If so, I guess it is perfectly reasonable for you to expect others to accept your beliefs, right? Makes perfect sense!
And why would you say that respect is due to someone simply because he doesn't demand that others accept his subjective beliefs? It sounds nice, but it makes no sense. Would you respect a racist or a sexist person simply because he didn't demand that you accept his beliefs? Do you really think that individuals should not try to extend their values - their subjective sense of truth, beauty, and justice - beyond themselves? By your broad generalization, everyone who votes is living in an illusory world. And to tell you the truth, I'm actually far more impressed with, and respectful of, those who are humble enough to realize that most beliefs are a mixture of objective and subjective evidence - of truth and error. It is those who do not accept this reality that inhabit an illusory world - a world that insidiously endangers freedom and tolerance in the real world.
Actually I believe it is finite in size, with finite time. It was actually created in a Big Bang.
The universe is just another creation. However, it was a 'supernatural event' because it was ultra-natural - outside space and time, because they did not yet exist. It was an event above science, because the scientific method could not be used to observe something that cannot be observed.
In fact, the singularity in the centre of any black hole right now is actually 'supernatural'. If we can observe supernatural events and places in the universe today, why do we limit ourselves in thinking them not possible elsewhere and in other times?
Those facts actually point to a Creator, and terrifies many atheist scientists so much that they come up with all weird theories about multiverses to explain the unexplainable.
Religion fulfills a deep human need. We can debae all we like where it comes from, but no self-righteous, self-important, professed enlightened-atheist, whether it is Richard Dawkins or otherwise, is going to remove that from the human condition. Like the 2 stories from the Life of Pi, we have two alternative narratives when it all boils down - one with a loving creator God and the other without one. We can't ultimately prove either so it is actually a choice.
If you want to chose the narrative without God, which I find as being without hope, and can live with that, then good for you. Just don't rain on my parade - even if you think it a delusion.
Sorry, are you disputing creation ex nihilo? I thought that was actually scientific orthodoxy today?
"A widely supported hypothesis in modern physics is the zero-energy universe which states that the total amount of energy in the universe is exactly zero. That is the only kind of universe that could come from nothing."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_ex_nihilo#Modern_physics
"I feel pretty confident that everything (or even something) did not come from nothing."
On what basis do you feel confident? Your own subjective belief perhaps, rather than objective evidence?
At the same time, the farther away something is in time and space, I suspect, the less knowable it is, and maybe also the less relevant. I imagine that there was a Big Bang, but I doubt that there was nothing before that.
So, yes, this is mostly just childish and innocent subjective speculation, and I have no interest in defending it as anything more than that. My original speculation was based on being told that God had always existed and always would. My brother and I wrestled with trying to understand that concept.
Let see, miss using that umbrella, some people express a lot of thinking with paucity of been “critical” and others a plethora of criticism with little thinking.
Here's a quote from Darwin's most high priest who is being reasonably honest and rational about this here. He makes no attempt to distinguish between the two (abiogenesis and evolution) in terms of evolution theory concerning origins:
Evidence:
HH: Did you ever believe in God, Richard Dawkins?
RD: Of course, I was a child.
HH: And when did you put off your foolish belief in God?
RD: When did I put away childish things?
HH: Yes.
RD: At the age of about fifteen.
HH: And under who’s influence was it?
RD: I suppose it was the influence, not of Darwin directly, but of the education in evolution that I was receiving. Hugh Hewitt Interview October 21 2009
Here's what Darwin's most high priest has to say:
A good example of Christians migrating, is Dawkins - and someone like cb25. Churches which have accepted evolution in terms of origins as fact are in my opinion those who harbour an atheistic undercurrent or attempt to hide their [atheism] in brackets. In my opinion they have, or ascribe to, a ‘form’ of godliness; but deny the power thereof.
― Charles Darwin
-- Charles Darwin, Autobioography, quoted from Nick Harding, How to Be a Good Atheist (Oldcastle Books, Herts: 18 October 2007), page 37
Joe: "Stephen, I agree with Earl on the notion that space is eternal and endless. I came to that belief from conversations about God being eternal and everlasting and infinite with my older brother when I was about 7 years old. To some, it may sound like the concept of a seven year old."
I think you'll find that modern science (upon which Christianity theology has agreed for the odd 2,000-years via the doctrine of creation ex nihilo) that the universe is not eternal and endless.
First of all the universe is not eternal. It had a start date of around 14 billion years ago to go with the latest scientific consensus. What was before that - nothing - no space-time itself! There was no time before time.
Secondly, space is not endless - not even the so called 'empty' space. There isn't just space that goes on, and on forever. The universe is finite size and is either growing or contracting (depending upon what theory you adhere to). Note, it isn't just the matter, light and 'stuff' that is growing and contracting, but space-time itself (i.e. including the 'empty' space).
As Bill Bryson explains:
‘Now the question that has occurred to all of us at some point is: what would happen if you traveled out to the edge of the universe and, as it were, put your head through the curtains?
Where would your head be if it were no longer in the universe? What would you find beyond? The answer, disappointingly, is that you can never get to the edge of the universe.
That’s not because it would take too long to get there—though of course it would—but because even if you traveled outward and outward in a straight line, indefinitely and pugnaciously, you would never arrive at an outer boundary. Instead, you would come back to where you began (at which point, presumably, you would rather lose heart in the exercise and give up).
The reason for this is that the universe bends, in a way we can’t adequately imagine, in conformance with Einstein’s theory of relativity (which we will get to in due course). For the moment it is enough to know that we are not adrift in some large, ever-expanding bubble. Rather, space curves, in a way that allows it to be boundless but finite.
The analogy that is usually given for explaining the curvature of space is to try to imagine someone from a universe of flat surfaces, who had never seen a sphere, being brought to Earth. No matter how far he roamed across the planet’s surface, he would never find an edge.
He might eventually return to the spot where he had started, and would of course be utterly confounded to explain how that had happened. Well, we are in the same position in space as our puzzled flatlander, only we are flummoxed by a higher dimension.’ (emphasis added)
http://www.huzheng.org/bookstore/AShortHistoryofNearlyEverything.pdf
Thus, the universe is no more endless than the surface of the globe is endless. The earth, like the universe is limited, of finite size and age, but of course in proportions that boggle the human mind.
If seven-year old Joe got this wrong, about the same time he gave up belief in God, then what other assumptions may he be mistaken of in his professed certainty about the nature of existence? Perhaps the god Joe chose to give up belief in is actually a lesser sort of god I don't believe in either?
But, seriously, the limitless mental model of the universe held by little "seven-year-old Joe" was inspired by belief in an infinite, all-powerful, all-knowing, creator God. And little Joe did not doubt His existence. In fact, little Joe became adolescent and young-adult Joe, and his faith grew and began to mature in many ways. He studied the SDA versions of religion and theology and science, and became a "literature evangelist" and an elementary school teacher. He met and talked at length with many people from various faith traditions. He attended religious services of many faiths around North America and Europe. And he came to see much more validity in a generalized Christian faith tradition than in a highly defined sectarian perspective.
That somewhat "more mature Joe" began to see the message of Jesus as a message of hope and liberation, and much more a message of love and tolerance of diversity than of narrow prescriptive dogma. He began to have a nagging suspicion that formal religion had become so institutionally compromised and fragmented that it no longer was a valid representation of the message of Jesus--that the valid message was pretty simple. That the true message really had to be simple enough for anyone to understand and accept if it was internally valid. That intellectualization, including reading and studying manuscripts in original languages, and such, was irrelevant to the basic message of Jesus.
Even so, the "maturing Joe" continued to have faith, and one of his favorite scriptural promises was that "you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." It seemed to the "young adult Joe" that there was a sense in which giving serious consideration to all evidence that could serve as a window on authentic reality (i.e., approximation of "truth") should advance one's freedom in the sense promoted by Jesus. These thoughts were occurring within a context of returning from army service in Europe, marrying his academy sweetheart, returning to college, and generally confronting a much wider world than that of little Joe.
In the wider world of the maturing Joe, many earlier held concepts were falsified. Some of these were very personal. Some were emotional and others intellectual. But the landscape that emerged was one of diminishing trust in concepts and authorities that had been readily accepted by "little Joe." Learning more about experimental methods and science and statistical inference and probablistic thinking all added perspective on ways of evaluating the extent to which evidence adequately represented authentic reality. While all this did not result in a rejection of God, it did lead Joe to formally sever his relationship with the SDA church at around age 30.
Long before that, however, he became aware that theoretical physicists and cosmologists had proposed models of a finite universe of a rather specific configuration. He did not really reject that concept, and does not even now. It just seemed (and still seems) quite remote from anything that matters much to him. And "Old Joe" holds his feelings about eternal space quite gently and tentatively--in many ways, much as he holds the impression that there may well not be any such thing as a spiritual dimension or domain. The "Old Joe" recognizes that he does not know, and suspects that he cannot know, whether or not there is a God in any sense of the term.
Old Joe does recognize one sense in which God is very real. God certainly exists as a concept that influences the behavior of humans. S/He may exist in as many senses as there are people who harbor the concept. But in terms of objective and authentic reality, Old Joe doubts that the God concept held so long ago by Little Joe, has much validity. And yet, who is to say how valid any God-concept is for anyone else of any age? Old Joe's best guess is that all gods are inventions of the human imagination, but he is quite aware that he could be wrong about that.
For me personally, I don't believe in gods and agree they are mere creations of the human mind, because they are things that either do or do not exist in space-time. Even when you and I are long dead, we will still 'exist' in space-time in some sense - located in the past. But the thing we ascribe as 'God' is something raddically different.
'God' (and you can use a different term) in my view is the thing that existed before existence, was before there was time to describe a before, being before there was matter to allow anything to be considered a being. In that sense, God does not and cannot exist, because only things in the created universe can exist - including 'empty' space which is still 'something' of space-time. This is why ancient theologians of multiple faiths use to only describe God in the negative tense. We can speculate about what God is, but in reality we can never ever know. We are much better though as guessing what God isn't, rather than what God is.
Now can you be so certain that you don't believe in that God, which actually doesn't exist (being outside space and time) but is still real?
So, I can sort of see why one might arrive at the idea that before God did anything at all, He existed alone in a vacuum or black hole, with time beginning when God allowed something other than himself to exist. That is sort an appealing concept, although it seems speculative, at best.
We certainly disagree about the "hard wired" belief in God or gods. I think that could be true only in the sense that our brains seek to relate various pieces of information to other pieces of information with attribution of causal relationships. While this is quite useful for many purposes, it also often fails to be accurate, leading to superstition and magical thinking--which are quite common elements in religions.
'There is a kind of "unity" in black holes...'
The point of my comparison is to black holes is merely to note that there are a bunch of atheist scientists who don't believe in God, yet are happy to believe in black holes, which are effectively outside space-time, cannot be observed using the scientific method (rather only their effect can be observed), and are 'supernatural' and 'do not exist' technically insofar as they are places where the laws of physics cease.
And yet no serious astropysicist denies that black holes are real. Why then are people more certain (even if you are just suspect) that God doesn't exist? God is essentially 'OTHER', and black holes give us a real-life glimpse into that Other.
'I am pretty certain that I do not believe in God--at least in the sense I was taught that he existed.'
I wonder to what extent there are two separate concepts hear that people commonly confuse. There is a belief or disbelief in the God, being transcendant I AM, which is to say the OTHER, which actually can't by definition be defined, and which by definition doesn't 'exist' because it/she/he exists outside of the physical laws of the universe.
By contrast, there are human perceptions or descriptions of who or what God is like, which admittedly does exist in a large degree in the minds of human beings. Religious people argue that revelations as to who or what God is are 'inspired', but even if one rejects that, it doesn't necessary prove God doesn't exist. It only proves that perception or description of God is wrong.
Similar to that, we need to distinguish lesser deities, like gods, and the transcendant I Am, which is the OTHER. Paul tried to make this discussion to the philosophers in Athens, noting his God was not just another mere God but the unknown God. The Jews have not been the other people to come up with this same transcendant Other, but they described it best in the notion of Yahweh and their prohibition of graven images.
'He existed alone in a vacuum or black hole'
Yes but not exactly. Even an empty vaccum is 'something', composed of space-time and subject to the laws of physics. God was before even the empty vacuum came into existence.
Instead of saying God was in a black hole, one could say that a black hole provides a glimpse into the realm of God, which is outside the created universe of 'existence'. Funny enough, thousands of years ago, people use to see stars as gaps in the fixed, hard dome of the firmament, looking into heaven. In some ways, they weren't that wrong, with black holes being the real 'windows of heaven.'
Adventists might also find it interesting that Ellen White in vision saw heaven through a black hole! Obviously God was showing things her human mind probably couldn't fully understand, but it is interesting.
'That is sort an appealing concept, although it seems speculative, at best.'
That is the deference between science vs theology and philosophy. I obviously make no claims to scientific proof of God, what existed before and outside the universe, or what is on the other side of a singularity, because those places and events are all before space-time and the laws of physics, so the scientific method is completely useless.
These are 'supernatural' places, events and concepts, beyond science. Thus, it would seem more appropriate for those expert is metaphysics, rather than physics, to speculate about these things.
Funny enough though, atheist-scientists such as Dawkins, Hawkings and others have no problems with straying 'off their patch' into discussing these issues, even though they really are metaphysical rather than physical matters. Dawkins and Hawkings are happy to speculate that God doesn't exist because their is an endless cycle of Big Bangs through multiple universes. That would seem scientifically dishonest, in the sense of:
i) those are not 'scientific' questions;
ii) they are far more speculate than simply saying there is a God or Other that is the cause;
iii) don't adequately the origins anyway, because who then made the first universe and first Big Bang? Their multi-verses are nothing more than gods, where one asks, who made the first God.
The Jewish God I Am (with comparisons in Greek The Good and Hindu Brahman) isn't just a bigger version of us or a bigger god like Zeus sitting on a cloud. God is something entirely different, the 'Other'. That is why I said many theologians for thousands of years have only described God in the negative.
'We certainly disagree about the "hard wired" belief in God or gods.'
Yes we disagree. Without hardwiring, how do you explain so many deist people in the world? Why did the Soviet Union's decades of atheist propaganda fail? Why is it that even in secular countries in the West, where belief in organised religion is so low, that people still crave spirituality, which is often manifested in popular culture, whether it be in Vampires, Matrix, Superheros, Zombies, Witches and Wizards and Jedi Knights?
I am not making a moral judgment on that hardwiring. I am saying that even assuming religion is bonkers, you, Dawkins and other atheists are never going to 'win' the debate in convincing people to abandon religion, because it seems to be part of the human condition.
If you look Australian Aboriginal society, which is a link to our 'natural' pre-neolithic past as to the sort of environment we are adapted to live in, religion has an enormous part of their life and culture - the biggest part! God and religion is part of being human, even if you and a few other lucky ones have somehow evolved to a point beyond need it.
As you know, I do not label myself as atheist. Also, I am not in any way responsible for anything said or written by Dawkins or any other atheist (or anyone else, really). I do not have to believe what they believe or defend what they write. I admit that there is much I do not know. And I suspect that there is much I cannot know.
I feel suspicious of the claim that black holes are "supernatural." If the "laws" of nature do not apply to certain things, perhaps the status of those law concepts needs to be reconsidered. You know, the principles that are discovered by humans and labeled as "laws" need not necessarily be immutable. It seems wrong to claim that something is "supernatural" just because it does not conform with our concepts and understanding of what is natural.
But, it seems to me that we are way off in dreamland with all this speculation. You seem to be much more interested in physics and metaphysics and cosmology than I am. Not that there is anything wrong with that....
Using biology, psychology and evolutionary theory does not disprove whether a transcendant God created known existence, including the laws of physics itself.
I like cosmology and physics precisely because it doesn't seem to be as taineted by the culture wars as other areas of science. I also enjoy the nexus between physics and metaphysics that occurs in cosmology.
Again using the example of the black hole. You are in the realm of physics beyond the rim of the hole. When one passes the point of no return from the gravity well, the laws of physics, including space and time, start to break down. At the event horizon itself, nothing exists - not space, not time, not 'emptiness' and no 'laws' as you describe them - you are beyond science and in the metaphysical realm.
I am not saying God is exactly like that - just using black holes as a simple analogy to challenge preconceived notions that science can tell us all the answers. I also want to challenge the notion that people who believe in metaphysical things outside physical reality must be crazy or ignorant, because in black holes we have a real-life example of metaphysics before us.
Just a thought regarding "laws." I'm just making this up, not drawing it from a dictionary or textbook, so bear with me. It seems to me that a "law" of nature is usually thought of as a statement or principle that is both generally and specifically accurate. And often, it seems, that we may also mean that it is universally valid, at least in the natural world.
So, if it turns out that a principle is generally true and specifically applicable, and then we find that it is not specifically applicable to some circumstance or phenomenon, what do we make of that? Do we continue to accept that the "law" is universally applicable, or do we question whether what we thought was a "law" really is? It seems to me that we then would recognize that the assertion that the "law" was universally applicable (i.e., that it is really an inerrant principle) has been falsified.
What you seem to be doing is regarding iconic physical statements ("laws") as more authentic than reality, because you keep the law and discard the reality/naturalness of the phenomenon. You are imparting more power and authority to a concept than to something that seems to really and naturally exist.
I often see people challenging the notion "that science can tell us all the answers." But who in reality makes such a claim? I certainly don't, and I don't think scientists generally do. At the same time, just making up the answers is not a very satisfying exercise. It means that "there are more questions than answers," as has been stated often at the conclusion of scientific papers. It seems to me that we pretty much have to conclude that there will always be mysteries that have not yet been solved and for which no adequate scientific approach has yet been devised.
So, how can we know anything, and when will we know that we know? For myself, I am most satisfied with tentative answers based on tangible real world evidence. The more remote in time or space or theoretical speculation, without tangible evidence, the less applicable I find answers. But, maybe that's just me, and I'm quite confident that it isn't all about me.
We know it is 'real' because of the effect it has on things around it. However, in some respect black holes do not 'exist' because they are places where space-time and the laws of physics break down, to the point that they no longer exist at the singularity.
Black holes are also 'supernatural' because they are outside of the physical universe as the laws of physics no longer apply. They are also supernatural because they cannot be observed using the scientific method, because there is nothing to be observed, and cannot be observed using the scientific method, as light itself cannot even escape.
The only thing we can observe in a scientific and physical sesne is the affect of black holes. In that sense, we can only really talk about black holes in negative terms. As to what might be at the end or at the other side of a black hole, scientists can only speculate, and they usually go from science towards subjects of speculate philosophy and theology.
And yet despite all that, who would today say a black hole is note true and real? Now how about the thing (I call it God but you can call it whatever you want), that was before the original singularity of the Big Bang itself?
There is some distance from the event horizon to the sigularity point inside a black hole. Black holes are of different sizes. Space-time is so warped around a black hole that energy [mass] cannot escape the event horizon but it does not suck in everything beyond its vicinity otherwise the whole Universe would collapse into a gigantic Black Hole. Physicists in general are more careful against extrapolation beyond ranges hence it is assumed that the Laws of Physics as we know them stop at the event horizon of a black hole. I hope other sciences show similar discretion.
Your point might provide another interesting analogy to God - again I am talking about an analogy!
As you say, at black hole singularity, where the laws of physics stop and is outside of space-time. In the same way, God is actually transcendant, impassible and unknowable, as it says in the scriptures no one can know God and live (I'll leave Christology aside for the moment to avoid complicating things).
Things are past the event horizon but not yet in the singularity of the black hole are still bound by the laws of physics to a degree, but they start to break down. Things start to get weird and 'supernatural'. Time appears to stop. Observers see things differently from those subjectively experiencing them.
Similarly, being close to God produces a warping of our own physical existence. The laws of physics start to be warped, which people might explain in terms of miracles, whether it be say Christ's incarnation or resurrection. Time appears to stop in places. Observers see things differently from those who subjectively experience them.
Within that context, one can see notions such as miracles, like Jesus' resurrection, are not as crazy as they might first seem!
The Grand Theory that unites QM with Relativity has yet to be developed. Reality often are more amazing than fiction. Quantum tunneling allows particles to escape potential barrier higher than the energy levels of the ejected particles. Who knows physics as we know it might yet work out some 'tunneling effects' of black holes to allow the outside world to farthom the interiors of black holes. The knowledge of black holes are actually gaining grounds. Classical physics may 'breakdown' in describing phenomena near the speed of light but the law of physics extended to that realm in Relativity. To say physics breaksdowns at the boundary of a black hole is a cautionary statement that current laws of physics may not apply or need to be modified. I hope that discretion is observed by all branches of science.
Thanks but I hope you are getting my wider theological as opposed to scientific point. It is that people are quick to say that God doesn't exist, and that metaphysical events are impossible, whether they be notions of miracles, life after death or Christ's resurrection.
But my point is your point - reality is more amazing than fiction. We should be careful in our arrogance in discouting belief in metaphysical events like Christ's resurrection as belief only for deluded luniatic Christian idiots. These same atheistic scientists want us to believe in thigs like black holes, worm holes, tacheon particles that travel back in time, the Big Bang and qantum physics.
As for your statement that the laws of physics extend to the boundaries of a black hole - ok. But what about at the actual point of singularity itself? Moreover, what about before the actual Big Bang - what laws of physics existed then?
Roy, changing the topic a bit, do you have relatives in the Angwin area? I had a friend there long ago named "Cam" Campbell. who managed the college service station (Chevron) where I worked. I always wondered what became of him. It seems like he probably retired about 50 years ago.
The latter is what I think defines Theistic Evolution or Religion by natural selection.
While there are some analogous parallels between the evolution of religions and biological evolution, there are probably very few really homologous parallels. But, think about how religions fragment and go off on tangents resulting in separate "populations."
Stephen, do you mean spatial-time continum is all there to it in human existence? How do you account for other 'dimensions' of human exitstence? Do you mean Space-time is reality because the logic brain conceives and creates it in the same manner that man conceives and creates God?
I sense Stephen makes no claim "God is a black hole", but rather that the characteristics of a black hole suggest that it is not knowable in conventional sense, as the nature of God is unknowable.
We might be able to determine very little of the structure and function of a black hole, but even less determinable is our grasp of the structure and function of God. Interesting analogy, and perhaps with some merit. Can God break his own moral laws? How about those of physics, chemistry, gravity, biology? Considering Gods claims to be light, can He exceed the speed thereof? Clearly God inhabits a dimension and a nature we can speculate about-and He seems to invite the conversations not only because he gave us the curiosity, but minds capable of stretching and developing defining concepts.
I find it interesting that people can so easily dismiss notions of 'supernatural' possibilities, whether it be say the notion of an afterlife or miracles, as outside known science and the laws of physics. And yet these same people have no problems admitting they acknowledge black holes, where indeed 'a black hole suggest that it is not knowable in conventional sense, as the nature of God is unknowable.'
Whilst Dawkins and Hawkings (and no, I am not necessarily putting Joe or anyone else in their group) are so certain in their disbelief of God, they are equally so certain as to the existence of black holes. I also totally agree with Timo's last comment. I think speculating about God is like speculating about what is at the singularity of a black hole.
We can't know for sure in a 'scientific' sense, because the scientific method can't work in those places, being places where space-time and the laws of physics break down. Speculation should and does occur, but such speculation is theological and philosophical in nature (i.e. metaphysical), not scientific. Again, I find it ironic that atheist scientists such as Dawkins mocks theologians as so much 'intellectual masturbation' but isn't his own speculations about multiple universes, what existed before the Big Bang, and what might occur at the singularity of a black hole, are not scientific observations but essentially his own metaphysial speculations.
All I am saying is if a rationale, scientifically-literate and sane person can believe in the possibilities of black holes without being accussed of a mental delusion, why should we not adopt the same openness to the possibility of other 'otherness' or 'metaphysical' possibilities, including God and resurrection?
Yes, there is irony in the world. At the same time, some people identify speculation as speculation. Others portray their speculation as fact. Personally, I don't think "mocking" anyone is very productive, even though it may be fun for the mockers. Ridicule is pretty much a critical strategy of last resort.
Yes very true Joe. There are extremists in every group. I wonder if Dawkins, Hawkings and other scientists (which I know you are very different from you and your approach to issues) would consider their particular theories about multiple universes and the like as speculation as speculation or speculation as fact? It is one thing to speculate about God's existence or non-existence, but quite another to say the answer to that question, whether either in the positive or negative, is undeniable fact.
I am not 'certain' of God but 'suspect' there is a God in much the same way you seem to suspect there is no God but are not certain there is no God. When it all boils down to speculation, I personally choose to life my life by Pascal's Wager. I can't prove as fact God's existence or not, so I would rather live my life as if He does indeed exist, rather than the alternative.
Again, the message of the Life of Pi is pretty much the same, and I thorough recommend seeing the movie (or better reading the book) if one has not.
Perhaps to some readers, "God is like a black hole" improperly ascribes characteristics of a black hole to their misunderstanding of your concept of God.
God is unknowable like a black hole is unknowable...surely such a conceptual framework would save the literalist many arguments regarding many issues. Then again-if the standard narrative concretions are questioned...they react as if existence of God himself is questioned. I like Chris' somewhat parallel suggestion on Irv's new blog.
Falsification as a paradigm in science is a formalized show down of competing scientific theories subjected to the verdict of experimental outcomes. To falsify a theory is not to find fault with the theory but to force it to state the experimental outcome resulting from that theory contrary to the outcomes of competing theories. The verdict of the experiment(s) demonstrates which theory is supported by nature.
Could you explain how your young concepts were falsified? It is an interesting concept to apply a scientific paradigm to other areas of life. How is it done?
Joe should know what he was talking about when he stated his youthful concepts were falsified. When he answers my question we will both understand. Let us be patient.
This doesn't need to be made difficult or obscure. If we can just use the term "falsification" to mean "found not to be so" or "found not to be supported by evidence," that is what I meant. As an important example, I found that the stories of literal very recent origin of life (ca. 6000 years ago) and of a universal flood were not supported by abundant geological and paleontological evidence.
Although my first serious training in research design and experimental methods (under a bright young professor of experimental psychology) involved something close to indoctrination in the notion that we can only "know" things as a result of carefully (and, perhaps, perfectly) conducted experiments, it quickly became clear to me that formal experiments were not the only means by which knowledge could be gained, and that even "pre-experimental" measurements and observations and documentation provided bases for the hypotheses to be subjected to rigorous experimental testing. Further, it became clear that the extent varied to which various areas of science rely on formal experimental hypothesis testing.
I began to see that there was a remarkable array of evidence of various quantities and qualities (and apparent credibility) that directly contradicted (if I may say, "falsified") the "young earth" hypothesis (which had never been presented to me as a hypothesis, exactly--more as a statement of unchallenged and ultimate truth or dogma). At around this same time, I was learning about "authoritarian" belief systems and the epistemological problems of relying on "authorities" for information (in religion, politics, government, etc., as well as science). I began to develop a capacity for evaluating evidence on its merits, and to think in terms of probabilities, and, generally, to examine information without either accepting or rejecting it.
Across the years I have developed what I sometimes call an "evidence-based" approach to living and making decisions. This means to me, seeking information from all sources, experiments, surveys, observations, reports, opinions, whatever, and giving them due consideration. Lots of times there is not enough really strong information available, so one cannot have much confidence one way or another. Sometimes one has to make a decision anyway, so one just does the best s/he can.
I am pretty critical of scientific studies, whether they are pre-experimental observations, measurements, or surveys, experimental, quasi-experimental, prospective or retrospective, or epidemiological, in terms of the design, the selection of topics and contexts and materials & specimens and hypotheses and results and statistical analyses and discussions and conclusions and all that. Scientific research styles differ within and between disciplines and traditions.
So, anyway, it does not "take a rocket scientist" to see that the "young earth" dogma I was raised with is not supported by evidence. It is only supported by scriptural "authority," and even so, it is not even accepted as literally accurate by many otherwise religious people including their clerics--something I was also finding way back in the 1960s.
It seems to me that SDAs do themselves no favors when they insist that people accept concepts that are contradicted by essentially all the credible evidence. Many of the people who participate in AToday recognize that the "young earth" concept does not align with the evidence. In most cases this has not resulted in a rejection of a supernatural creator God. And I do not claim that God is falsified by evidence.
Philip, my apologies for the wordiness of this reply. I hope this is of some help. You are welcome to contact me directly by email if you wish to discuss scientific methods, and such. my gmail address begins with agingapes. Take care. Warm wishes. --Joe
Elaine, You wrote: "Name one person who actually witnessed the Resurrection."
I don't know their names, but there were soldiers guarding the tomb of Jesus. They were offered money to lie about what had taken place. Besides, Mary and the other women and Jesus' disciples did witness the death of Jesus and they talked to him after the resurrection. These disciples were so sure that he was alive following his death that they chose to die as martyrs rather than deny his resurrection!
A scientific sounding expression does little to support one’s opinion. It is precisely to avoid cafeteria style of drawing scientific conclusions that the paradigm of falsification is most valuable although some sciences have difficulty with its rigor. It is only obscure when ignored.
To be fair, though, what one is studying has some influence on how it can be studied. Application of rigorous methods is easier in some fields than others, and what is acceptable within disciplinary traditions also varies. While rigorously designed experiments may yield very reliable and replicable results, those results may not generalize to the more complex and less controlled "real world." Some scientists opt for less precise and more generalizable study designs. We do not always (even often) have the luxury of randomly assigning real patients to experimental treatment groups. And the "participant observer" that is commonly accepted by anthropologists is often rejected by experimental psychologists as a "reactive arrangement."
One of my friends who is a PhD virologist/immunologist has several times confided in me that he never took any coursework in school in statistics or research design. Apparently, there have been many biomedical and other scientists whose training did not include this element, and the deficiency shows up when it comes to planning and evaluating hypothesis-driven research. Even so, this friend learned very rigorous bench procedures and laboratory notebook documentation.
One interesting window on this problem is the view from being a scientific journal editor responsible for conducting peer review of manuscripts from a range of disciplines. One quickly begins to find pretty big differences in the standards and methods of various fields.
One of my pet peeves is the conclusion reached by authors that the data "are consistent with" the hypothesis (even if they have failed to reject the null hypothesis of no difference between their hypothesis and an alternative or alternatives they may be seeking to discredit). Bah! And this is awfully common in fields like ethology, zoology, evolutionary biology, and "evolutionary psychology" (a subfield of anthropology rather than psychology).
Anyway, my point is that we need need to carefully evaluate what we read on its merits, and we need not (even, SHOULD not) embrace anything from any source too quickly or tightly. The quality of evidence varies dramatically. Examination of evidence from various sources can help us form a more complete and comprehensive understanding of reality.
A broad spectrum of information from such fields as geology, paleontology, anthropology, and the biosciences can be applied to the hypothesis that everything was created 6000 years ago. That hypothesis, taught to me as fact when I was a young person, has been falsified. As a "null hypothesis" one could assemble an array of evidence regarding the statement "the evidence that life on earth has existed for less than ten thousand years is equal to the evidence that life on earth has existed for more than ten thousand years." The null hypothesis would be overwhelmingly rejected.
Does that "falsify" God? Not at all. There are no tools in science to address anything supernatural. Does it falsify scripture? Only in the sense that it shows that the Genesis stories are not appropriately applied to provide precise information regarding the timing of "the beginning."
So, it will come as no surprise that I think the church and its members do themselves no favors when they make claims about God and faith and science that suggest that God MUST have done something in a particular way and any evidence to the contrary must be wrong. That is "putting God in a box." Science is useful. It can be relied on, to the extent appropriate. It should not be given more credibility than it deserves. Evidence should be given due consideration on its merits. We should equip young people with methods of evaluating evidence, rather than insisting that they reject well established evidence in favor of unsupportable dogma.
I am still puzzled at the way you use the word 'falsified'. I suggest you use ordinary word like finding fault with or finding something to be false. It is confusing with scientific sounding word saying ordinary things.
Scientific rigor gains credibility. Yes there are a broad spectrum of different degrees of rigor among different disciplines hence different levels of credibility.
I guess I don't really know the origin or history of usage of the term "falsification." I'll have to see what I can find out about it. It is not uncommon for words to take on special meanings in scientific usage than they have in less formal usage, but I don't entirely understand why this word bothers you, Philip. Perhaps we understand the meaning differently somehow.
Does it not seem to you that reliable, tangible, real world evidence can "falsify" a hypothesis generated by religious belief? If not, why not?
“That hypothesis, taught to me as fact when I was a young person, has been falsified.” How was the hypothesis falsified? Did someone altered the hypothesis to make it to say something other than what it was saying originally? Or do you mean the hypothesis was found to be false?
Your explanation will help me understand better that word in the context in which you used it. I can understand if a person falsified a document meaning he doctored it with untrue content. But to use that word in reference to a hypothesis in a scientific context confounded me. I appreciate your clarification.
The hypothesis was found to be false.
This is the sense in which the term is most commonly used in science, I think.
I checked into that usage a bit. It might be helpful to look at the ways in which
Karl Popper used the term "falsification" in scientific epistemology.
I hope this helps.
Warm wishes.
Indeed I hope you think hard on Karl Popper's paradigm of falsification.
A hypothesis remains a hypothetical conjecture to be tested. It can be shown to be true or it can be shown to be false with evidence at hand and in the statistics sense depending on the probablity of the test statistics landing in the critical rejection region. A rejected hypothesis properly carried out signifies the result of due diligence, it certainly beats theories that ignore the minicule probabilties of their realization claimed to be laws of nature.
As an observer to your sharing back and forth with Joe, I'm a little confused. For others of us who are trying to follow your points, can you perhaps put in simple english what you are driving at?
Hope you don't mind Joe, but I just don't quite follow. I totally understand your use of falsification, popper etc, but Philip, you're losing me on where you are confused when you came back with that last point?
An example:
Hypothesis X: Effect of A equals effect of B. If the hypothesis is rejected (disproved), it was not being falsified.
But if someone says hypothesis X stated that Effect of A equal effect of C or some other statements deviant from the original hypothesis then that person may be considered falsifying hypothesis X.
Joe stated a hypothesis was falsified to mean it was found false. It cannot be the sense the word is commonly used in science. That is where the confusion lies.
Philip, I'm feeling uneasy about asking what I feel I need to ask, but I will do so anyway. I'm not quite sure whether you are a professional scientist who conducts experiments and tests hypotheses, or whether you are getting your knowledge and questions from Wikipedia and other on line sources. It could be either way. The reason I hesitate to ask about your background is that I do not wish to seem or be authoritarian or elitist. At the same time, I respect your right to be as private as you wish to be, so I would welcome direct email correspondence with you. My contact address is "agingapes" AT "gmail" DOT "com."
Chris, I expect you took my original meaning. Sorry about getting into the jargon.
I was just saying that it became clear to me that the evidence I became much more aware of directly contradicted what I had been taught as an adventist growing up and at PUC--that life on earth was less than 10,000 years old.
Stated as a hypothesis, that would be: "Life on earth is less than 10,000 years old."
Any instance of bones or artifacts (e.g., tools made by humans) or fossils credibly dated at older than 10,000 years would "falsify" that hypothesis--that is, would demonstrate that the hypothesis was incorrect. The credible evidence, even 50 years ago, clearly showed that life on earth existed more than 10,000 years ago. Even more than 100,000 years ago, or a million, or a hundred million years ago. The abundant credible evidence consists of millions of specimens.
What makes all this confusing is if someone is willing to deny all this material evidence in favor of believing that their interpretation is absolutely inerrant regarding some ancient writings. And if this denial is taught to young people as absolute truth, as it was to me, the result is much confusion about why abundant solid evidence is rejected.
I am a statistician and a member of the Permantly Head Damaged (Ph.D.).
Joe, I am not trying to deny the facts of nature, rather the interpretation of thosee facts. Genomics do not prove common ancestry, beause there is an alterrnative explanation: common design. The
Bible is very clear on this: We are the product of the creeative power of God. This rules out macro evolution and common descent. We find hundreds of biblical refereences to creation, while none to Darwinian evolution. We need to make a choice between human opinion and God's revelation through his prophets and through Jesus himself. I choose to believe the latter!
Joe, yes I did take your original meaning, and it made, and still makes perfect sense. Like Stephen's point also below, I am still puzzled as to what Phillip was trying to get at, prove or disprove, about your comment.
Ok so to say a hypothesis is false merely means there is insufficient evidence to prove it as true, not that it is positively not true? So to say a hypothesis is false means it could still perhaps be proved true one day? Is that what you are saying?
Was what was the original context then of Joe's statement? How does this relate to the actual topic again exactly?
Joe. Abundant solid evidence is rejected because: Fear of changing horses in mid stream may collapse the
house of cards.
In the absence of a census, to make inference about a population on a sample one can only rely on the outcome of that sample to draw conclusion about that population. Hence there is always an element of chance (uncertainty) depending on the sample that was drawn. That is why conclusions are generally not stated in a definitive black and white manner.
Philip, there is, of course, plenty of uncertainty and very little absolute certainty. Much of what we say needs to be put in some sort of non-absolute probablistic terms. On the other hand, people do make absolute assertions. Such assertions are often easily demonstrated not to be true, at least, not true for all the cases they have attempted to include in their statement. Some statements can be rejected on the basis of evidence to the contrary. In such cases there is not really any need (or point) in invoking inferential parametric statistics or even levels of confidence.
We have all heard the statement "All generalizations are false, including this one" as a warning against over generalization, and we have also all been warned about the use of "always" or "never."
Think of the assertion: "Life did not exist on earth more than seven thousand years ago." That is a statement that begs for evidence to the contrary--evidence that does not just make the statement unlikely, or very, very, very unlikely. ANY shred of credible evidence might call this statement into question, but millions of pieces of tangible and highly credible evidence, often obtained independently by many people in many different ways from many different sources, show that this assertion is, quite simply, not true. It is not just "not verified," it is "falsified." Fifty years ago, the evidence was already abundant. During that fifty years, overwhelmingly moreso, not just quantitatively, but qualitatively.
The sad thing is that some people insist on interpreting their entire world and staking their eternal destiny on that statement, when they do not need to at all. And they use it as a basis for teaching vulnerable young people to mistrust science and scientists more than is really warranted, and to hold fantastic and even paranoid views of the world. It's sad. And saddest of all because it is so unnecessary. It is needlessly "putting God in a box."
Joe, you wrote: "If 6,000 years was just a little bit off the mark, that would be one thing, but it is many orders of magnitude away from what is very clearly shown by tangible evidence. So, what else did the adventist tradition get wrong?"
For me the choice is rather clear. If we evolved from apes and amaebas, then not only Adventists are wrong, but the entire Bible must be discarded, and this includes Jesus Christ, who did believe that Adam and Eve were the result of the creeative act of God. If we are the result of a protracted, unguiden, and non-directed action of millions of years of evolution and natural selection, then the doctrine of creation, the moral fall of Adam, and the plan of salvation make no sense. We must simply accept that this life is all we will ever get. Such a choice is unthinkable for me!
Are you serious?
Actually you are correct regarding "Lucy." The Lucy skeleton is tangible evidence. What people
think about "Lucy" is certainly open to revision in accordance with evidence. In some cases, it
is possible that finding even one more bone or fossil could change some minds. I'm sure you
know the difference between hard evidence and objective data and discussion and speculation
about what evidence means.
Philip, I'm just dying to know more about you. I think knowing more my help us communicate
more effectively. Are you a science professor (e.g., psychology or physics)?
My graduate training was in physics and my Ph.D. was in biomathematics. Statistics is a hobby that pays for my living expenses. All my statistics courses were taught by statisticians. Design of Experiments turned out to be one of the most useful courses I took. Another useful course was Sample Survey Statistics. I work for a natural resources agency and most of my clients are biologists (at least 95%). I do in house training in statistics and participants are mostly with college, graduate and even Ph.D. degrees. I have fun interacting with biologists. My observation is that most of them take evolution as a given fact of nature but they do not have the enthusiasm to convert everyone to their belief. My biggest surprise is Catholics that talk evolution as facts. There seems to be little contradiction. I find it amusing every time when one says evolution results in such and such and many of their statements are very reasonable and agree well with observations in nature. But in every incident I could say to myself what a wonderful design. Whether it is innate or imputed it takes intelligence to recognize intelligence and design. ID most likely does not mean anything to a dog. Being created in God's image is my conviction and answer to Einstein's amazement that the Universe is comprehensible.
This post is a simply profound. It’s telling that Einstein, of all people, found the comprehensibility of the Universe amazing. The design in nature is as apparent, or evident, or observable as anything else.
That Catholics regard evolutionary Darwinsim as fact is intriguing. But should it be surprising?
Phillip, you wrote: " ID most likely does not mean anything to a dog. Being created in God's image is my conviction and answer to Einstein's amazement that the Universe is comprehensible."
Thanks for this wonderful conclusion which is more valuable given your experience and training.
When I was googling around trying to find out something about you, Philip, the person I most frequently found was probably your grandfather, Phlip Law, in or near Melbourne. Is there a connection?
In any case, yours sounds like interesting work.
Sir, I have come across many good learned men and women, who, without batting an eyelid, would readily accept the dating methods used by geologists and palaeontologists. They conclude that these dating methods are scientifically accurate and are undeniable evidence in favour of evolution. Dr Erwin and others regularly make reference to such dating methods as highly reliable and accurate and coax creationists to look at these ‘scientific’ studies to confirm what they believe. I have however, come across some good arguments questioning these methods of dating especially in terms of it not meeting the stringent requirements of scientific method employed in a priori science. What is your take on this?
I ask this also because I have come across an eye witness account posted on an internet blog of a geology student whose evolutionist Geology Professor in Australia made some remarkable statements regarding the process in which rocks are dated. The Professor strongly alluded that there were many assumptions and pre-determined aspects involved in the process, which includes the geologist's estimated date for the specimen. The lab would then test to determine if it falls within the estimated time-frame submitted by the geologist. In other words there seems to be some inconsistencies employed in these grey areas of geological dating which are candidly overlooked and accepted as the norm. This is what the student says regarding the lab testing:
- “The lab technicians reject as aberrations, artefacts or contamination all dates that do not fall into the pre-conceived time frame given by the geologist.” [taken from Darren Higgens comment on a Dr Tas Walker Blog]
What astounds me is that these grey areas of ‘science’ are blatantly flouted and accepted as norm by a majority of scientists. They talk of evolution as a fact and use the term interchangeably when referring to either adaptation within a species or the grey areas like origins and the decent of man.22Oct1844, you wrote: "“The lab technicians reject as aberrations, artefacts or contamination all dates that do not fall into the pre-conceived time frame given by the geologist.”
I have heard Dr. Ariel Roth, the former Adventist Geo Science Researdh director make similar assertions on many occasions during his preseentations.
We have among us, in Dr. Ervin Taylor, someone who has made a life work of examining specimens and applying dating methods and evaluating the precision and reliability of various techniques. My impression is that he fould it necessary to personally assess the validity of the claims made by some of his professors that the methods of dating could not be trusted if they concluded that life on earth had been around for more than 6000 years. He can provide expert testimony to us on this issue. Believe it or not.
Yes, Taylor is an authority in his field, and I heard him enumerate a list of around 20 assumptions on which the dating techniques are based on. Destroy some of those foundational assumptions, and the entire edifice of scientific dating will fall down like a house of cards.
Contrast this with the reliability of biblical prophecy and the sure foundation of the acts and pronouncements of Jesus Christ, the one who did witness the creation of our planet and the creation of Adam and Eve. When referring to marriage, Jesus said: "In the beginning it was not so!" I ask: Which beginning was he referring to? Did he have the Big Bang in mind or the creation of our planet and Adam, our common ancestor?
I cannot both believe in the Darwinian evolution and the divine creation described in the Bible at the same time. They are antagonistic by nature. If Darwin was right, the Jesus and the Bible are wrong. I have chosen to stick with the Bible and Jesus!
But some other people have faith in God that allows them to understand some things differently than you do.
It is apparent that it is similarly impossible to prove that God exists as it is to disprove that He exists.
I have personally never understood how it is possible to believe that God exists but disbelieve any/all sources of that notion. On what is such a belief/faith based?
Those who don’t believe that God exists make more sense than those who believe; but only do so a la carte or for no discernible/explicable reason at all.
Should we conclude that you belong to the atheistic camp?
Perhaps I should not have used a semi-colon, as you seem to have missed that what followed it was to have qualified or modified that which preceded it; or was meant to have, anyway.
Is this any clearer: “Those who don’t believe that God exists make more sense than those who believe but only do so a la carte or for no discernible/explicable reason at all”? I hope so.
Perhaps I could have said that those who don’t believe there is a God and those who do not believe that we can know there is a God make more sense to me than those who don’t ever offer a reason for their belief—but are clear as to their various reasons for disbelieving any and all sources of the notion of God.
There are equal reasons, or equal lack of reasons for proof or disproof of God.
Agnostics avoid such an argument by neither believing or denying the existence of God.
women are treated in the Middle East. In Jesus's days on Earth, recognizing that women had no status,
and the need for the Gospel to be spread to the known world, only men could challenge the extremely high risks of open travel, and would be able to deliver the gospel message. Women would have been raped & stoned. Even the apostles & travellers for Christ were traditional in the masculine supremancy, and couldn't have considered women as leaders, and this obviously influenced their testimonies.
Today, in the 21st century, WOMEN, are educated, and have proven they are equally as intelligent, and capable of excellence in leadership, when given the chance. i believe they are more dedicated & faithful, and thorough in their churches & homes than men. Men get the credit, but women usually do the work. Where would the cradle roll, primary, & junior SS be, without women. Where would the social aspect of the church be, without our dedicated women.
Please, lets move forward, the time is now. Lets welcome those women the HOLY SPIRIT is calling
forth. The Holy Spirit is GOD. Will you secod guess GOD?
The fact that there is a fine tuned universe and life in it is sufficient evidence for me that someone must be responsible for this. Many years ago my father-in-law purchased a piano which needed a tuning job. I decided that I could probably tune it for him. Had I waited for chance and natural selection to do the job, I would be still waiting!
If I may misquote Freud, but just a little: Materialism “is the process of unconscious wish fulfillment, where, for certain people, if the process did not take place it would put them in self-danger of coming to mental harm, being unable to cope with the idea of a god. . . .”
The “illusion of autonomy” often morphs upon reflection into the opposite: Absolution Determinism.
To quote Shaw: “Darwinism seems simple, because you do not at first realize all that it involves. But when its whole significance dawns on you, your heart sinks into a heap of sand within you. There is a hideous fatalism about it, a damnable reduction of beauty and intelligence, of strength and purpose, of honor and aspiration.” George Bernard Shaw Back to Methuselah 1921
As we discuss the ‘objective’ realities Genetics and Information Theory, we must keep in mind that the subtext of all we say reflects our, sometimes unearthed, spiritual psychologies, which are as real as any series of strata on the surface.
Could you show us some evidence from Dawkins that for him design (sorry, I'm not going to capitalize it for you!) implies a god who is a projection of anger etc? At this point it seems a rather unjustified assertion.
Re yourself. You openly admit design is appealing because it gives you meaning, love, hope etc. You did suggest you were misquoting Freud, but his original line was addressing your thinking. Don't you think you more than misquoted him, you twisted him into the opposite meaning.
Here's his more complete quote: "Religion is the process of unconscious wish fulfillment, where, for certain people, if the process did not take place it would put them in self-danger of coming to mental harm, being unable to cope with the idea of a godless, purposeless life."
Meaning, love, hope sound pretty much similar to the motivation Frued is describing.
Surely, recognizing these "psychologies", as you call them, is the first step to reducing their impact on our thinking and analysis of evidence? How do you actually know that poeple like Dawkins, etc have not reached their conclusions having understood these factors?
On another angle, you seem to be using these "strata" to invalidate conclusions people have come to, ie Dawkins, Hitchens etc, but that cuts both ways, your desire for hope, love etc equally invalidate your conclusions, if indeed these "strata" are valid in doing so, as you imply.
Maybe I can ask another question to simplify my drift above.
If there is a risk that I may "find something to be true because I want it to be true", How can we avoid or reduce this danger?
What 'need' is what we believe fulfilling? I have confessed, what about you?
I have indicated several times here that I try to live an "evidence-based" life. But I think there are also very important roles for intuition. While I especially intuition informed by evidence that is credible, I imagine that we often confuse intuition and biased values with our person impressions about credibility of evidence.
We tend to consider evidence to be stronger if it supports what we already think (or want to believe).
There has been a lot of consideration of how to get past psychological bias by designing research to eliminate subjectivity. One psychologist/epistemologist whose work is worth reading is Donald Campbell. Perhaps I've suggested him before.
I would have to say, in following evidence, it has more often led me in unexpected directions, has pointed to conclusions I would rather not have reached etc, so to say I am fulfilling a need in your sense I think is off track.
I very much agree with the principle that we consider evidence stronger if it supports what we already think or wish to believe is so. I actually think this principle gives credibility to conclusions people have come to "against their wishes", so to speak. I suspect that is Dawkins, rather than the charge you lay against him. Not that I agree with his atheism, but the evidence he uses to get there is pretty damning of positions some of us hold out of desire for hope!
Now, I would really like your evidence for your claim about Dawkins. ie your psychological assessment/assertion about him.
Nagel "I want atheism to be true..." And now you are using, Nagel's "..My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition..." As a fact to prove your assertion about Dawkins? Evidence please! From Dawkins.
Nagel may, though I doubt it, be right about this "fear" in general, but remember, just as your hope does not make your position "right", or "wrong", nor does fear make his so.
One of my guesses is that my rearing with such a literal and brittle view of scripture and of right and wrong and of young earth age so poisoned and distorted my view of God that I was damned to erroneous expectations of the Almighty. Perhaps if I had begun with training in how to hold knowledge more tentatively and gently it would have been less of a shock to find such a glaring contrast between what I was taught as a child and what I found in the grown up world of real life.
Committing to an evidence-based life (as a goal), with recognition that much is not known--especially by me--, and many things are unknowable, has changed my expectations. And, along the way, I learned methods of acquiring and evaluating evidence that gave me some basis for how confident of it I could be. There is pretty much a continuous range from pretty confident something is so, to being pretty confident it is not so. I still very much value intuition and imagination. Sometimes the evidence is comforting. Other times? Not so much. But, I can live with that, whether the answers are the ones I want or not.
I have to mention, though, that the most interesting evidence I have found in doing scientific studies has been the evidence that turned out exactly opposite of my expectations (and often, the conventional "wisdom"). There is a lesson there, I think, at least for me.
Perhaps you need to seek Him on your knees! The evidence is all around you. Ask Him to open your eyes!
Was I somehow less than sincere? During those times I had not yet even begun to doubt. Ultimately, the closest thing I got to a personal revelation was an impression that the Holy Spirit was instructing me to grow up, be a man, and use the brain I was given.
Looking back, I suppose that was just a self-generated instruction provide by my own brain. So, for those who were chosen to receive a revelatory message, I'm happy for you--especially happy if it was a truly valid experience, not merely self-deception, delusion, or hallucination, but, of course, it leaves me wondering how you know it was valid, or how you can know about the validity of similar reports by others.
The Lord did answer my prayers with a yes many times during my 80 years of my life. Nevertheless, I had my share of no aswers as well. From the first day my children were born, I prayed for God's protection for them twice every day. The Lord did protect them for many years; nevertheless, when my youngest daughter was 20, she died in a car accident; and my son died of a stroke at the age of 51.
Should I question the love or existence of God? I don't think so! God did protect his Only Son for 30 years from the time he was born. Yet in the time of Jesus greatest need, God seemed to have abandoned him; nevertheless, he honored him on resurrection day. Take heart, my friend. Use your head, but do not forget to rely on the Lord even when the evidence seem to be temporarily absent.
You have my best wishes, Nic, even when we see things differently.
Darrel, have you not read me over the last year or two? To keep it simple, I am indebted to Joe, above for observations about his experience that I can say amen to!
My worldview has changed. Not because I "wanted" it to, but because evidence led there. I grew up an Adventist. And Adventists are "people of the truth". I took that seriously! Just so happens the answers I found made SDA "truth" look like naval gazing inside a fish bowl ignorant of the world around it.
I don't have all the answers, but I can absolutely tell you: The truth shall set you free. I don't think "freedom" was a "need", but is sure was a result. No longer the tyranny and burden of religion.
Like Joe, I spent my time on my knees. I spent years fine tuning my theology and understanding Scripture, but in the end, I simply followed evidence/truth out of the fish bowl.
Now, just quickly. I was looking up Dawkins yesterday after you made your swipe at him, and came across what he would say if he met God when he dies. He would ask him two things: Which God/god are you? And, why did you go to such lengths to hide yourself from us? Food for thought.
"Insight into what kind of glasses we are wearing as we look at the facts (empirical evidences around us) aids us to really see what we are seeing. "
Yes, I would suggest that "aid" should be employed to warn us to look more carefully for what we are not seeing. There is little doubt the hardest thing to find is what you are not looking for!
Re Dawkins, yes that was the comment that seemed to me to be an unkind, or unfair judgement. That is why I asked you to demonstrate its validity. You may well find him angry at times, but if so, what is he angry at? What are his reasons? Is it God, people, stubborn Christians, YECers? IDers? Society... what? Have you addressed any of that in making your assertion?
I have to repress feelings of anger when I watch people like Veith, Batchelor, etc. Is that projection of an angry God? Not.
if we are recirculating that which we've viewed before. Believe we, all, consider, DOA, any alien views
out of hand, once the mind is set. Recall your earlier confession that you were content, and at peace, as
you follow your current outlook of deity/evo. i wish you all that you wish for yourself. Very few people
on Earth have peace and contentment.
On thing perplexes me, in the several references to Dawkings, is that often he posits anger and rancor
towards those who refuse to believe as he does. How could they be so stupid? How could he be so
arrogant? The quest for proof of the answer, for the masses, of the certainty of the origins of life, will never happen for the living. Why then the animosity of one belief system to another?Why the "moral"
outrage of one to another. Anger and pouting never is a placebo for action of the "love thy neighbor".
What peace and cotentment is possible for the Christian, if proved, there is no GOD? Distress, distress,
for most, would prevail. It seems that many can't stomach the annihilation of the masses as has happened over the ages, and who can? If there is a ALMIGHTY, contrary to the record of fallible OT scribes, no human intelligence can second guess the ALMIGHTY, of why He hasn't made an effort to give earthy evidence of His existence, or to allay the fears & questionings of His creatures. Being the Eternal, Earth Time may not be of significance in His eternal planning. That the Earth can't support all the humanity, if no strife, plagues, or death didn't occur frequently. There should not be a constant battle between those of opposing views, live & let live with benevolence & charity for all.
None of us needs to allow or support the claims of the angry and oppositional to be represented as our views. We can decline to let the hostile people with whom we otherwise agree to claim that we support them. We need not allow people we agree with to disrespect and ridicule those with who we differ, any more than we would accept the opposite.
There is, however, a possibility of opening one's mind to consider evidence (and ideas) without adopting or defending them. They can be considered as a point of view that need not be grasped tightly.
Here is a small quote from something I came across while researching about Dawkins in response to your comment.
I suggest reading the whole article.
"...but perhaps most of all, I get angry -- sputteringly, inarticulately, pulse-racingly angry -- when believers chide atheists for being so angry. "Why do you have to be so angry all the time?" "All that anger is so off-putting." "If atheism is so great, then why are so many of you so angry?" Which brings me to the other part of this little rant: Why atheist anger is not only valid, but valuable and necessary...."
http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2007/10/atheists-and-an.html
Posting this does not mean I agree with all sentiments, but it should give pause for thought how our actions affect others.. note. This is in response to Darrel describing Dawkins and projection of anger etc.
I saw frustration. I saw response to people angry for their god.
It did nothing to justify your judgment of Dawkins or anybody else, but it did explain why they may be angry at people like you...
I don't recall Christians wer being persecuted there. Today, most of the people in other countries report being much happier than those in the U.S.--a "Christian nation." Go figure.
BTW, you don't say in what country you live. Is it better or worse than elsewhere?
Speaking of Dawkins, The National Review just reported The atheist proselytizer claims on his Twitter that a pig is more human than a human fetus. From his Tweet:
"With respect to those meanings of “human” that are relevant to the morality of abortion, any fetus is less human than an adult pig."
Dawkins point is that a pig has more awareness than a human baby in its mother, so it is fine to kill it. This is an example of the loss of human value that evolutionism leads to.
Further, no atheist speaks for me. I see no value in atheists being so strident or "evangelical" in criticizing or antagonizing believers. I can see them opposing efforts to teach religious dogma as truth in science classes in public schools, and I can see why atheists would be angered by such efforts.
At the same time, I can see why anyone, atheist, agnostic, or Christian would vigorously oppose efforts to indoctrinate public school students with any kind of religious dogma.
What we also see, though, is an effort by some Christians (including some here), to portray science as if it were an anti-God religion, and the scientific study of speciation as if it is essentially religious belief with no more evidential support than any other "opinion." This is maddeningly misleading, and it is not hard to see why people committed to evidence-based education would oppose--even angrily oppose--such positions.
In my area there are Christian charter schools to which children are sent to protect them from being taught dangerous ideas like evolution and to keep them from associating with children who are unlike them (in terms of religious tradition and/or ethnicity). In the south, when I lived there, it was very clear that private Christian schools were being set up to avoid racial integration, along with the fear that the children might learn dangerous things in biological science classes.
I do grant you that there are plenty of people who believe that evolution is real who are not very knowledgeable about it--not unlike anything else, religion included.
Dr. Nagel did not receive an Adventist or fundamentalists education. So where could he possibly get these opinions?? It's a mystery!!
Such statements are completely not history. The Catholic church did not change sabbath, although it is so often said within Adventism that many, if not most believe it. A good study of early Christian history will show this is completely erroneous. Even several SdA theologians have written that the early church began meeting on Sunday in celebration of the Resurrection, several centuries before there was a Roman Catholic church. The early Christian church was "catholic" (little C-meaning universal) as it was the ONLY Christian church for more than 15 centuries, and all were observing the first day of the week; not by ordering change from the seventh, as there was never such a command in the NT about observing either the first or seventh (unless you are able to furnish it).
"It got in by default only because it excludes God rather than any credible a priori evidence and is one of the doctrines intoxicating the Christian Church today. "
Oh dear...what can one say? Brother, just because you can write such a sentence does not make it true. The theory of evolution rests on a mountain of a posteriori evidence. Your statement otherwise is an incredibly a priori statement which is completely indefensible from evidence? I like Joe's word above "maddeningly". Maddeningly frustrating!
My freind, God got kicked out of the trenches of science because he was not there to defend himself. If he'd left even some tracks a posteriori methods would have found him, even if he was snoozing under a bush someplace. I would submit excluding God was NEVER the intention or desire of science. He is just absent by default of its methods, and the absolute dearth of evidence.
There is my friend a place for righteous indignation.
While we are on it. Let me point out something else I find frustrating in this kind of discussion.
You have responded to my point about frustration to 22. You said nothing about the last paragraph of my reply to him. Now, you don't have to, but since you want to step into the topic, you should really have given equal thought to that last paragraph. It basically made the point why 22 was wrong in his statement about the "reason" evolution "got in".
If you had read and understood that paragraph properly, if I am correct, you may have understood why I viewed his comment with frustration. It completely fails to understand science, and the relationship it has "with" or "to" God.
So, next time, please, instead of latching on to one point, consider the whole. This is what frustrates here so often, people grab one point they can either argue against or criticise, and ignore the points they can't argue against, and that may in fact render their counter arguments DOA if they allowed the whole thing to impact them.
1. "If God gets kicked out of the trenches then so too must evolution" Why?
2. The theory of evolution is based on scientific analysis of the data of nature: Why and how is that on the "faith side"?
3. Yes, you were talking about evolution being the monkey on the back of science. A point neither lost, missed, nor ignored. The theory of evolution is the result of observations about nature and scientific study. It is not a monkey on a back; it is the result of science.
I would suggest that virtually nobody sets out to find excuses (evolution as you imply) for not believing in God. No. People make observations about our world, and the way it is, and "by accident" find out that the way this world is does not measure up with traditional beliefs in God. They don't deliberately set out to disprove God, he is a casualty of the enquiring mind and the facts of science.
As for the distinguishing mark between faith and science. That sounds cool. Why am I still waiting for a reasoned explanation of how and why that is true? No one has yet shown why it is not just an excuse to believe the "in-credible" and ignore credible science and observations about this world.
Elemental molecules (purines, pyrimidine ribose, amino acids) were formed. Gradually the purines and pyrimidines bounded with ribose and phosphorus to form nucleotides. Nucleotides paired with other nucleotides to form Ribozymes. From the ribozymes (having the capacity of genetic information and enzymatic activity) RNA, DNA and proteins were synthetized and life began. So from RNA came the REST and BEST.
Really? No so fast
- In the natural and real world the elemental molecules are form by enzymes.
- Without enzymes the backbone (purines and pyrimidines) of the ribozymes can’t be form.
- Enzymes are functional proteins that have several amino acids with a very specific order and structure, if a single one is replaced or missing, the function is lost.
- DNA/RNA gives the precise order and function.
- Without DNA/RNA enzymes can’t be produced and without enzymes DNA/RNA can be synthetized.
So the hypothesis “from RNA came the REST and BEST” does not pass the REAL TEST.With all respect, your neat little sequence above says nothing about the process of evolution after life began.
You are imposing on "the beginning" (ie what came first) the understanding we have today as being absolute and unchanged back then.
Have you never read all the creationist material about UNIFORMITY!? You are using an argument of uniformity to state precisely how it happened "back then". I happen to believe there is a reasonable case for things being uniform, but when it comes to the type of questions you are answering with it. Dream on, it is conjecture and theorizing at best.
In the "natural world" billions of years ago any concept of how sequences, attractions, forces, worked to bring simple life together is a tough question way beyond the simplification you suggest.
Stanley Miller readily admitted the difficulty of explaining this in Discover Magazine:
“The first step, making the monomers, that's easy. We understand it pretty well. But then you have to make the first self-replicating polymers. That's very easy,” he says, dripping in sarcasm.
“Just like it's easy to make money in the stock market -- all you have to do is buy low and sell high. He laughs. Nobody knows how it's done.”
Stanley Miller quoted in Peter Radetsky, "How Did Life Start?" Discover Magazine (Nov., 1992).
The most prominent hypothesis for the origin of the first life is called the "RNA world." In living cells, genetic information is carried by DNA, and most cellular functions are performed by proteins. However, RNA is capable of both carrying genetic information and catalyzing some biochemical reactions. As a result, some theorists postulate the first life might have used RNA alone to fulfill all these functions.
But there are many problems with this hypothesis.
For one, the first RNA molecules would have to arise by unguided, non-biological chemical processes. But RNA is not known to assemble without the help of a skilled laboratory chemist intelligently guiding the process. New York University chemist Robert Shapiro critiqued the efforts of those who tried to make RNA in the lab, stating: "The flaw is in the logic -- that this experimental control by researchers in a modern laboratory could have been available on the early Earth." Richard Van Noorden, "RNA world easier to make," Nature News (May 13, 2009)
RNA world advocates suggest that if the first self-replicating life was based upon RNA, it would have required a molecule between 200 and 300 nucleotides in length. Jack W. Szostak, David P. Bartel, and P. Luigi Luisi, "Synthesizing Life," Nature, 409: 387-390 (January 18, 2001).
However, there are no known chemical or physical laws that dictate the order of those nucleotides. Michael Polanyi, "Life's Irreducible Structure," Science, 160 (3834): 1308-1312 (June 21, 1968).
To order nucleotides in the first self-replicating RNA molecule, materialists must rely on sheer chance. But the odds of specifying, say, 250 nucleotides in an RNA molecule by chance is about 1 in 10150 -- below the "universal probability bound," a term characterizing events whose occurrence is at least remotely possible within the history of the universe. see William A. Dembski, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Shapiro puts the problem this way:
“The sudden appearance of a large self-copying molecule such as RNA was exceedingly improbable. ... [The probability] is so vanishingly small that its happening even once anywhere in the visible universe would count as a piece of exceptional good luck.”
Robert Shapiro, "A Simpler Origin for Life," Scientific American, pp. 46-53 (June, 2007)
The RNA world hypothesis can't explain the origin of the genetic code itself. In order to evolve into the DNA/protein-based life that exists today, the RNA world would need to evolve the ability to convert genetic information into proteins. However, this process of transcription and translation requires a large suite of proteins and molecular machines -- which themselves are encoded by genetic information.
All of this poses a chicken-and-egg problem, where essential enzymes and molecular machines are needed to perform the very task that constructs them.
One of the errors made by those who claim to calculate probabilities of such things happening "andomly" or "by chance" is that they make the assumption that these are all independent events, when, in fact, they necessarily involve a dependent sequence of events in which molecular accummulations and metabolic changes build on one another. What exists both limits and enables what can follow. It is not a matter of independent atomic dice with a near infinite number of faces being rolled at each step of a process.
So, if you wish to evaluate the RNA origins hypothesis, just evaluate it with some fairness, not so much with an eye toward rejecting anything it suggests. Just give it due consideration, if you are going to pay any attention to it at all. Just because someone suggested this hypothesis and thousands of studies have been done that have refined it and added to its credibility does not mean that you have to believe it or disbelieve it. Just don't erroneously claim that there is no evidence nor any basis for the hypothesis. It is as if you think there is some great satanic conspiracy of Godless idiot scientists out there trying to disprove God. You can't be serious! (a little John McEnroe, to add a smile)
been fairly "heated", ie: Dawkins. You said you liked Joe's word above, "maddeningly", maddeningly frustrating. My dictionary describes maddeningly "become mad or insane, angry or wildly excited".
Interestingly, i didn't catch Joe's reference to maddeningly, just took your word that he said the word.
i was not giving any opposition to your ongoing dialogue with 22 Oct. i was concerned that your frustration was causing you anger, and hoping you were not having trauma over dialogue. As to "fair & reasonable argument", that could be claimed by both sides of the debate (arguement). Also doubt "righteous indignation" is possible with us Earthlings. Chris, i never intend malice.
Thanks for the note.
I also intend no malice, but words are tricky things at times...:)
Cheers
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Why not?
Because evolution is based on scientific observations, study, research etc. The theory of evolution rests squarely on the shoulders of science. (why do I think of Dr Carson when I write that:) In the trenches evolutionary theory, in its increasing complexity and understanding of life, is the result of hard won conclusions based on data from a scientific perspective. God, as a faith proposition, does NOT belong in the trenches.
IF, repeat, If data turns up that can apply scientific study to God, and that can be studied from a scientific approach, then fling him back in the trenches. IDers of course are trying to do this, but usually the only defendable place they can poke him is in the gaps. Even there he can only be defended by absence of knowledge, not the presence of knowledge. It would not be a "gap" otherwise. Big difference!
I figure you are trying to insinuate that evolution is a faith based thing, again. That is soooo tiring, and completely defies the fact that the theory of evolution is nothing more, and nothing less than explanation and understanding of facts, data and observations about nature. etc.
What data, facts, and observations about nature when applied to the theory of "God" would stand up to scientific scrutiny?
But on another topic, can you give me some information on Andrew Jackson University and its online doctoral programs? Are they regionally accredited yet as a real university, or just as a national online institution?
Neverthless, the acrediting agency did allow the school to grant the Ph.D. degree to me and to the other students who were in the program while they were seeking said acrditation.
In my case, I was not terribly disappointed because what I was seeking was training which would prepare me for doing my research on the issue of abortion. This the school did quite well, I believe.
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What you are talking about here is that there were Christians who met on Sunday for whatever reason. That is not proof that it was changed by any official Church body. No one is saying that no Christians met on Sundays. What is being said here is that these Christians who met on Sundays made no official decree of such a change. It was the Catholic Church which did this. They are very keen to take credit for it too. There is also ample proof that this was done, by, I might add, a religious political power just like the Bible prophecy indicates. The timing of Constantine’s decree fits in perfectly with the other related prophecy of Daniel 2.
Show me Ma'am where a religious political power (other than Constantine) changed the day of worship from Sabbath to Sunday. There is no evidence of any instruction or counsel in the Bible in this regard. Not even Jesus Christ makes mention of a change of worship day especially since he is a Sabbath keeper and is Lord of the Sabbath too.
Prior to Constantine, there was much persecution on all sides and many did abandon the Sabbath for fear of being identified as Jews. Others made the resurrection a day of worship as you say. However, this was not any official Christian position taken by the Christian Church as a whole. Sunday was a pre-existing day of Pagan worship which was rife at that time. Constantine saw an opportunity to meld the two by forcing his Sunday worship decree for various reasons. This wasn't done by any religious political power before him. Even Jesus died before the Sabbath started, then rested in the tomb during its sacred hours and rose on Sunday morning, the First day of the week.
It is this official political religious power with Constantine the ‘Christian’ at the helm that made an official change to Sunday as a day of worship. Earlier Christians did not have a basis for this change as the Bible cannot be changed and makes no change in this regard. The Catholic Church made decrees that the Church has higher authority over the Bible (and Christ - and God) and therefore has by its own authority made the change.
You see Ma'am - there is a dragon (satan) behind the scene who has attacked God's Law since his stint in heaven. He has given power to a religious political power to make war with the remnant of the seed of the woman which is the church. Not surprisingly, it is this crowd that (guess what?): keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus. If Seventh-day Adventists are not represented by this remnant then who is? Perhaps your favourite historians may know?
With reciprocal respect:
In regards “from RNA came the REST and BEST” does not pass the REAL TEST”.
The “evos” are the one who are imposing the RNA world
The fundaments of the RNA world are unsustainable when are challenged with established scientific biochemical concepts. To believe in a no-enzymatic synthesis of purines pyrimidine in nature is not science, is science fiction! (speculation)
In regards to “simplicity”: Takes a comfortable knowledge to simplify a complex concept maintaining it deepness and a considerable talent to make it fun, of course only the ones with robust knowledge of the subject will appreciate this.
Yes, it is interesting.
btw, don't tell David this, but my next task this morning is to go and wash and polish my BMW. However, mine came out of a different evolutionary branch - it is silver.
David, beemers are nice to drive, but just remember, they use them for taxis in Germany. That puts you and I in taxi driver status! Let's keep our attitude with a humility and respect suitable for taxi drivers.
Now, back to your comment. If you take a look at Joe's Blog "What is science good for", find the comment by Todd Allen, is is an excellent presentation of some points.
What strikes me about your approach David, is that you seem to think you have found a wonderfull hook upon which to hang your coat (faith). RNA and "show me a transitional fossil"! It is as if you have decided that these two things are "argument stoppers" for evolution, so you focus in on them and just keep hitting the same nail on the head assuming it is the last nail in the evolutionary coffin!
IT IS NOT the last nail. It is not even the first nail! My suggestion to you, after reading Todd's comment, is to vastly widen your research. Study the broad scope of paleontology, geology, etc and you will see that the RNA and "transition" issue are just a few missing pixels in a massive painting.
I would also, if I can say this respectfully, suggest that you do some work on your grammar / syntax. For some of us to whom words matter it would make your arguemnts easier to follow. I admit the last one was confusing in structure and lost impact because of this.
It seems to provide much information on some of the topics we have discussed here.
There is a lot of interesting work reported there, along with full-text access to many astrochemistry and astrobiology publications.
I just tried the link and got a dead end. It may not have copied/pasted right?
Joe
Dr Erwin recently tried to taunt Dr Samojluk regarding his Ph.D. Now cb25 follows suite by picking on the grammatical eloquence of Dr David. In the very same note that Dr David gets advice to improve his writing skills, cb25 makes a spelling error. Surprising how perfectionist evolutionists are; but I can see that it is just side-tracking. I for one easily follow what Dr David writes on the boards and that he does so with integrity and passion. What they call a 'pixel' on the painting (a trademark of evolutionist's) regarding origins and a lack of any real evidence showing any real changes in the real natural world regarding speciation is really the flawed basis of the theory itself or the miracle belief of their ‘arrival of the fittest’ religion. Even if but a much exaggerated ‘pixel’ it may help distinguish an original from a forgery. Dr David has cut the argument down to the chase - right down to RNA/DNA processes not displaying any evidence for any evolutionary processes explaining the miracle existence and replication of these organisms.
When they fail show any significant empirical evidence for the ‘miracle’ of origins then the ‘Theory of Convenience’ is invoked which states that now that we are here by miracle, we can take it from there and explain away any possibility of intelligent design and therefore a Creator; but you have to believe our millions of years ago tale in order to appreciate it – otherwise we’ll indoctrinate you by force as early as junior primary until you start to believe all this happened by chance millions of years ago in order to prove the formula: [anything + chance + millions of years] = [extremely complex design in living organisms]. If this invocation fails they then try to dig up dirt and criticise, make personal attacks and perambulate peripheries. I am a witness on behalf of Dr David at this tribunal and find that his position is credible, logical and highly rational. All the scientific jargon and literary etiquette is but a smokescreen behind which lies intellectual arrogance propped up by the ‘look at the evidence’ if you’re educated. Well, Dr David is educated; he’s looking; and being an honest scientist he doesn’t accept that evolutionism meets the stringent requirements of what would constitute empirical scientific evidence. Dr David has stated on a number of occasions that E. coli is still E. coli after all: what part of still don’t they get?
P.S. - if their ahr ani speling errrors in mi kommentz arebove plez 4give mee.
There is no tribunal. I am not seeking to judge anyone. But I do seek to make evidence-based decisions. Nic was very forthcoming about his graduate program in a way that can be helpful to all of us. I think he understands that I was not taunting him. "David," if that is even really his name, has not yet chosen to reveal his identity to us--which is his own free choice and he is entitled to his privacy. But being a witness just because you agree with someone does not testify to one's credibility as a witness. Not that there is anything wrong with agreeing with someone....
Breathe in. Relax. Breathe out. Relax. Repeat.
People call me out here on my writing style plenty. No problem, I take it on board and if I need to change, I will give it a shot.
It was not intended to offend. Sometimes we do not know how we come across until someone points it out. At least David will know that one person does not find him easy to follow. Sounds like I'm the only one. That's fine.
Yes, that site has some great material. I'm part way through it atm.
I heard a radio talk here the other day about exoplanets/planets etc. They number in the millions both inside and outside our solar system. Combine this with the material on that link and who knows what is out there!?
Here's an interesting link that relates to it as well.
http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/wickramasinghe.html
“Monomers react to form polymers (this is a polymerization reaction), and monomers keep adding to polymers to make longer polymers. Monomers may also add to other monomers to make short polymers. Soon, there is a sea of polymers with varying components. In RNA, these would be different nucleotide sequences. You also have polymers with varying lengths within this sea of "options." Now the polymerization reactions occurring in this sea are occurring at different reaction rates based on length and sequence. The faster reactions are going to occur more frequently and, therefore, will make more of the polymer products that came from the reactants that have the fastest reactions.”
According to the authors, we must also assume that fragments and bi-products are removed from the system, somehow. They do not specify how.
They go on: "Let us now suppose that some prelife sequences have the ability of replication." Let me repeat this sentence: “Let us now suppose that some prelife sequences have the ability of replication." Wait, wait please! Can we now “suppose” the very thing we are trying to prove????
The authors set out originally to explain how replication arises, but when you read the article, there is no explanation of how exactly it did arise. Their example illustrating this ability to replicate doesn't help:
“For example, at an early stage of the development of the RNA world, many possible nucleobases would have coexisted. But not all of these nucleobases could support templating, which is required for replication. Some sequences would happen to contain nucleobases that could template a complementary strand...”
As you can see as you read this “research” that this is one long ‘thought experiment,’ which fine, but not science!
the nucleobases were selected because they happen to allow for template-directed replication, but we still have no idea how or why template-directed replication even arose in a pool of polymers of varying monomer identity and lengths. The authors have successfully appealed to chance to explain what they set out to explain, and covered for their assumptions by referencing articles that conducted those studies, without addressing some of the problems with those studies.
In the introduction to their article, Chen and Nowak describe the transition from non-life to life as a seemingly "impossible leap because so many transitions must occur to transform the jittery molecules into a living structure." Their solution to this problem is to break down the origin of life into smaller and smaller transitions and "look for simple ways that physical and chemical effects could accomplish each transition."
The problem is there is not a simple way to construct a cell, or a protocell, or a replicating RNA strand, let alone one with a meaningful sequence. No matter how small you slice the steps, there are still biologically (and chemically) impossible leaps from one slice to another and another.
What does this study actually prove? That material chemical processes (which are mindless) cannot write digital code or through together the protein machines read and execute the code. In genetic we find irreducibly complex systems, within systems, within systems. The obvious product of an ingenious programmer and engineer; otherwise known as The Creator.
That is precisely what people do with "God" and "Intelligence" behind "Design". In fact it seems easier for them to "suppose" this, than the infinitely simpler possibility of an RNA having an evolutionary origin!
Link -http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/wick_hoyle.html
We have all heard that "the whole is more than the sum of its parts." Thus, when something is broken down into its component parts, it may lose some of its most important properties. There is an argument here against the simple reductionistic notion that we understand something by knowing of what it is composed. Of course, knowledge of the parts does add something to our knowledge of the whole, but such knowledge may not explain the emergent properties of the whole.
I find it easier to comprehend that there could be a progression from simple chemistry to more complex molecules than that extraordinary complexity suddenly (and supernaturally) occurred. But, that is probably just my "grass roots" mind set. If all this happened naturally, a "growth" model seems to fit better. If it happened supernaturally, who knows? It could have happened in any way--naturalistic or not.
So, if one is going to scientifically investigate this process, which means, among other things, one is limited to examining what CAN be examined, one cannot resort to explanations beyond the natural world. This does not mean it is IMPOSSIBLE for something magical or supernatural to happen. Who am I to say that something is IMPOSSIBLE? And yet, that is exactly what ID proponents are saying. "This is too complex. It is IMPOSSIBLE that this could have happened naturally. It MUST have been done by an outside force. It is too wonderful and too complex for my mind to understand. Therefore, it MUST have been created by a SUPER MIND. Who else but GOD could have a mind so great or so much creative power as to make such things?"
That seems to be the reasoning, and yet it seems completely unreasonable to me, and I do not understand how it can be thought by anyone to be evidence based. It almost seems as if the only way to reach such a conclusion is to start out with the answer one ends up with.
The point is to try to understand what happened (or could have occurred naturally) without just making up an answer and accepting it.
In the natural world it is very difficult (impossible) is to explain the non-enzymatic formation o elemental molecules of life. So
The hypothesis of the “arrival of the fittest” was introduced since early 60ths and goes more or less like this. The meteorites brought the elemental molecules to aqueous solution, in this media gradually this molecules formed bounds to form more complex molecules and life started. These elemental molecules were amino acids, purines and pyrimidine.
Even hardcore biochemist “evos” recognize these tremendous limitations.
For now “hasta la vista amigos” (see you soon my friends) this one still has to work full time.
I'd also suggest reading a research report by Michael P. Callahan, and colleagues, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences from 2011. The full-text is available on line at:
www.ncbi.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3161613
This goes far towards ruling out the "contamination" concept you brought up. That was always a concern of mine regarding the extraterrestrial origins idea.
Please understand that my presentation of very easy to find (on line) evidence is not meant to threaten anyone's faith in God the creator. I'm just saying, there is no need to put God in a box by claiming that he did not use natural processes to accomplish something. Taking hard line stands on things you think could not occur or had to occur leaves you vulnerable to disappointment, and even loss of faith, when more evidence comes along.
Of course, as we know, David has been innoculated against loss of faith by having a profound personal conversion experience. But even such an experience does not need to result in brittle insistence on any particular view of astrochemical evidence, in my humble opinion.
In addition to Joe's suggestions, may I suggest another point or two?
You speak of the "arrival of the fittest". You focus your argument on purines and pyrimidine. The link Joe gave counters your argument.
In addition to this you may find this link (below) of value regarding cyanobacteria within the matrix of meteors. Keep in mind that cyanobacteria are everywhere and can live in vastly diverse environments from water, moist, hot, cold, frozen etc. One "creationist leaning" (believers to use your term) site I read dismissed these fossils as post landing invasions by cyanobacteria on the basis that they only live in water! Incredibly ignorant of facts.
You may also find it of value to research meteors and the suggestions of biotic life (cyanobacteria) in the meteors that fell in lake Tagish BC, in 2000.
I find the contamination argument may be too weak to dismiss this kind of data.
As for "believers". David none of us should be "believers". We should simply seek out evidence. The moment I lock in as a "believer", I reduce my ability to do science, evaluate evidence, and follow it where it leads. Bias becomes my perception inhibitor.
link: http://www.panspermia.org/hoover4.htm
Also of value: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20039658-501465.html
and...some links in this one work and are of value: http://www.science.gov/topicpages/t/tagish+lake+meteorite.html
More to come after putting to sleep to my fours kids, well if I found the time. By the way I knew the suggested papers.
There is something you need to understand here. I am not arguing for OR against biotic life (panspermia) on meteors. I am saying that the research on the matter does present a plausible argument for it.
You seem to exhibit the dismissive attitude of a "believer" in denouncing it.
In point 6 above you quote an "authority" to bolster your case, but seem unaware that his material is not directly addressing biotic life on meteors, but their role in possible adding of "ingredients" to the "soup" on earth. These are differnt foci.
In addition to this, you are quoting a person with whom virtually every thing else he says you would disagree with. He calls IDers IDiots! Pretty clever, but not kind. His argument is put in the negative in order to build his own case for a different theory. Sadly we see this kind of exageration of weakness in anothers argument often when people are trying to bolster their own view. It happens both sides of the debate. Does not mean he is wrong, but suggests caution.
Your points 1 to 5 miss the mark. The paper does address contamination.
As for thymine and cytosine being "absent". Do cyanobacteria require all 4? Seems not. To demand that they do may ignore that some places they currently survive on earth may not have all 4. I don't know. But, more certainly, you are demanding uniformity by assuming that a cyanobacteria from billions of years ago requires exactly what ours do on earth!
If you read the full paper, you would have seen that there are already differences in this area within the meteors. These differences are in fact a mitigating factor in suggesting contamination is not the cause of the bacteria.
Did you read the full paper in the last link I posted? I suspect not, but correct me if I am wrong.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2087758,00.html
http://news.discovery.com/space/astronomy/meteorite-amino-acids-101221.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murchison_meteorite
In my view, all the theory connected with meteors and panspermia achieves it to push the problem back without solving anything about the origin of life. For this reason, my interest in it is very close to zero.
Yes indeed Callahan’s paper does address contamination but does not rule out.
“Establishing an unambiguous extraterrestrial origin for any biological nucleobase in carbonaceous chondrites is challenging…finding nucleobase analogs not typically found in terrestrial biochemistry would strongly support an extraterrestrial origin for these canonical nucleobases because they are often produced concurrently in abiotic syntheses”.
It is possible to insert molecules of nitrogen in the carbon 2, 6 or 8 of the purines by heat? Yes is possible, so in order to rule out the earthly contamination another method has to be use. The one I suggested in point 3 is the best. At least 3 internationals teams think that way (USA, EU and Japan) and are planning to do that. So we may have to wait until that time.
“As for thymine and cytosine being "absent". Do cyanobacteria require all 4? Seems not”
A basic fact of biology: all living organisms including cyanobacteria have DNA and 50% of backbone is given by cytosine and thymidine. Do you have different information?
Which one was Callahan's paper? Anyway, not ruling out does not destroy a theory. You cannot rule out that God exists, or that he does not either, but you can still choose a theory you think best fits the evidence.
Yes, point 3 would be the best way of ruling out contamination. Curiosity may assist in that. In the meantime, rather than dismiss a theory, we should give it degrees of validity based on the certainty of testing that can be achieved. There are other pointers within the tests themselves which can also increase this certainty.
As for thymine etc. read my next sentence. I said "I don't know", so why would you ask me for different information? I readily admit my lack of knowledge on that.
I think Hoovers full paper is the best overview of the data. I suspect table IV on p 23 has some data you may find relevant.
Nic, you don't want to push the problem backwards, but is that not what one does if they use God as the source of all?
I think there is relevance in looking outside of earth, after all we are part of a big cosmos, we are not isolated from it, and there is no logical reason we are th