Only those who can’t distinguish between science and their personal opinions think that ToE contains any morality. There is no more morality in ToE than there is in geology or a recipe for fudge – they just describe what is, they don’t prescribe what ought to be.
Your fuzzy thinking on this is an example of why you go around and around on the matter of evolution: you are putting your subjective reaction above clear thinking.
Is there any chance that we could extract these discussions about the morality of ToE to a separate thread so that we could keep this one on topic?
Perhaps, if you thought about it. We havenever left the Op?
We might have left what you were thinking of. And I would appear to be proving it in yor eyes. But, is there a possibility that your assumptions and the OP have a false basis? IOW what is really being discussed is your sensetivity when confronted or challenged by people wh are not scientists.
Ot maybe are uising Philosophy which seems to be forbidden within science.(IYO)
Or to put it another way. The Uo is wrong., and you have noe right to get offended when people find science inadequate or biased because scientce does not Rule KO.
What you are claimng is that scientists are beyond reproach because they are self regulating and their jobs depend on it. O wow. That can’t apply to anyne ese, like Historians/? Ministerrs of religion? Plumbers? Any proffessional!
Richard
That’s pure fantasy. The point is that many Christians such as you and YECers insult scientists and science right and left and thus make God and the Bible and Christianity look extremely stupid. The problem is that you and they talk about science in ways that have nothing to do with science or are entirely incorrect. You claim “philosophy”, the YECers claim “scripture”, but both talk about science in ways that in any profession, from musician to electrician to airline pilot, if you talked that way you’d be treated just the same.
Ah Diddums
Richard
Couldn’t have put it better myself.
There’s a reason why I make such a lot of noise about science in the workplace. It’s because it’s the workplace that hammers home to you that you can’t just fob off scientific findings that you don’t like. In the workplace, you are put into situations where you have to put scientific principles and practices into operation, where you have to get those principles and practices right, and where getting them wrong has consequences for which you should expect to be held personally responsible.
You don’t face this if you’re just approaching science from a philosophical point of view. You don’t face it if you’re being spoon-fed scientific understanding from YouTube videos and apologetics books. You don’t face it in science classes at school. You can even complete a science degree without fully appreciating it. And it doesn’t happen in every workplace. You don’t face it to the same extent in sales and marketing, or in pastoral work, for example. But there are many, many careers in which you do. Engineering. Aviation. Medicine. Information technology. Oil exploration. And so on and so forth. In some cases, the consequences in question can be severe. As in, companies going bankrupt, or people getting killed.
Once you’ve had to interact with science at that kind of level, you simply cannot afford to tolerate bad arguments about science. Rejecting scientific findings for philosophical reasons is simply not an option. You simply cannot afford to take anyone seriously if they are taking such a line. To do so would be unprofessional, irresponsible, reckless and possibly even criminally negligent.
For this reason, anyone who views the role of science in the workplace with derision or contempt, whether evolution is involved or not, should not expect to be taken seriously. Not by me, not by you, nor by anyone else for that matter. Such people have crossed a rubicon at which it is clear that they are no longer approaching these discussions in good faith.
Of course I can see the difference.
The difference is that the theory of evolution contradicts your religious beliefs far more than other scientific theories do.
Added: Since you ‘liked’ this post, you can’t have thought about it much.
@Roy
What you said was correct, what more is there to say?
Richard
We also know the causes of evolution, so the same applies.
DNA mutations occur in all populations of organisms. You were born with between 50 and 100 substitution mutations. If you compare any two random human genomes you will find about 5 million differences between those genomes, and those are due to the accumulation of mutations in the modern human population over time.
When we describe mutations as being random we mean they are random with respect to fitness. We don’t see any correlation between the mutations an organism needs and the mutations it gets. For example, exposing bacteria to antibiotics does not directly increase the rate of mutations that confer resistance.
A good analogy is the lottery. People buy lottery tickets with random numbers before the lottery drawing. They have no way of knowing what the winning numbers will be when they purchase the ticket. The numbers on the tickets are random with respect to winning. It is only after the drawing that we can know which are the “right numbers”. Also, if the odds of winning the lottery are 1 in 100 million we aren’t that surprised if 1 person wins when 150 million tickets are sold. The same for mutations. The rate at which mutations occur is enough to produce the differences we see between individuals in the same population and the differences seen between species.
Now, could the lottery be guided so a certain person wins? Perhaps. Could we know if God is guiding the lottery so a certain person wins? I don’t think so. Would we be correct if we stated 1 winner out of 150 million tickets sold can be sufficiently explained by blind luck? Yes. The same applies to mutations. The rate of mutation is sufficient for explaining the differences between species.
If you are trying to claim that natural selection doesn’t happen then you are denying reality. We see natural selection operating all of the time in nature. Even in human populations we see natural selection occurring, such as in the case of the sickle cell trait and lactase persistence. Why isn’t the trait for Tay-Sachs disease spreading as quickly as the trait for lactase persistance? Why does the mutation causing Tay-Sachs even exist in your view fo the world? If mutations are guided, then why would God give people such a horrible genetic disease?
You just run away from the transitional fossils when they are shown to you.
I am beginning to think you have a serious linguistic understanding deficit, becaue that is not remotely what I said
Why do you care if I think God is involved? Why does it matter to you that I do not accpet the random theory? Why should you care that anyone rejects any part of ToE?
There is no need for you to "pursuade me. There is no need to show your ignorance of concets or how it might impinge on my views. There is no need for science to be 100% correct. There is no need for you to flog a dead or dying horse.
I am not forcing you to beleive what I do, why do you try and enforce ToE on me?
Richard
Then what were you trying to say?
"It is biased to the strong, or the “Blessed” (having the right adaptions) and the cunning "
How is that not a reference to natural selection?
You can reject processes we can observe happening right in front of our eyes. That’s your choice. I’m just pointing out that your position requires us to ignore what is right in front of our eyes.
I’m not forcing you to do anything. You can deny reality all you want.
No that is you declaring that you are right and i am wrong.
Your platitudes about me being foolish are empty. They are just friendly words. It is what you believe that counts.
The truth is that you cannot witness the past. You cannot show me it happening. And you cannot tell whehter the deviations are in any way ordained or controlled. You cannot. It is not happening in front of your eyse it happened millenia ago.
So forget all this “You can beleive what you like” nonsesnse. it is so insincere.
Richard
I am pointing out what we can see with our own eyes.
Your claims are as much about the present as they are the past. Mutations are happening NOW. Natural selection is happening NOW.
If you think genetics is guided, then this has some rather serious implications for humans being born right now, and people living right now. People are being born with mutations that cause serious genetic diseases. If mutations aren’t random and are being guided in the way you seem to be saying, then why do we see this happening? Why don’t we see recessive lethal mutations being spread at the same rate in the human population as mutations that are beneficial, like lactase persistence?
Let’s take Tay-Sachs as an example. If you get a copy of the disease allele from both parents then you will die before you are old enough to have children of your own. Children with this disease only live a few years. However, there are no health impacts if you are heterozygous, that is if you only carry one copy of the disease allele. Using the ol’ Punnett squre:
If Tay-Sacks is the aa, then we would expect about 25% of children born to carriers to have Tay-Sachs because they will randomly get two copies of the disease allele. You are against this whole random thing. So how do you explain 25% of children born to carriers having Tay-Sachs? Is God purposefully having the allele passed on at a rate that is indistinguishable from what we would expect from random?
WIll you please stop trying to teach and
STOP SHOUTING!
Richard
You aren’t being shouted at, Richard. This is a faith and science oriented web site, and so when people get the science demonstrably wrong, they should expect to be corrected here for as long as they continue to get things wrong. It’s no more fair of you to expect T to desist than it it would be to expect a mathematian to let some “2+2=5” graffiti left on the walls of his classroom remain unchallenged.
So if you want T and others to stop, the simple solution is to stop making public wrong claims here. You don’t even have to agree. You can just stop posting claims that you can’t back up. And then in short order, I predict the corrections would stop coming.
Yeah – ultimately both go down to quantum processes. By the time weather gets up to pressure and temperature it’s already a long way from the randomness at the root.
That’s not completely it, though; mutations are random because the causes are random, e.g. nothing determines where a cosmic ray strikes.
The randomness is not a theory, it is an observation.
I don’t see that really being done – what is being done is to point out that since evolutionary theory is science, if you want to challenge it you have to do so on scientific grounds – just as if you want to challenge the making of a pie with a pastry chef you need to talk about baking.
No – it’s declaring that an international community of millions of scientists are infinitely more likely to be right than you are.
Except that if you want to say that they are controlled, you need to provide evidence. That’s true in any field, except in amateur philosophy where you can make up whatever your want.
And the question becomes why a faithful Creator would change mode of operations.
I don’t think the guidance Richard is talking about goes down that far, that it is about changes that end up with entirely different species etc.
And even if we could somehow observe the past his contention about guidance can’t be disproved since the amount needed would just vanish in the noise.
Or “brain-fall”?
(Would that come from a mindsoon?)
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