I think you are setting up a false dichotomy that works against your own arguments. What you are essentially arguing is that if we discover a natural process this means God isn’t involved in that process. This would seem to force God into smaller and smaller gaps in our knowledge as we learn more about the universe.
3 Likes
Why? there is no conflict with scripture, nor does it threaten a belief in God.
No it does not. Weather formations are primarily a result from differing air pressure and temperature. It would not matter whether these differences came from natural sources or directly from God, but as a general rule most people just see them as part of the world structure (in the looses sense)
It is not abut the mechanisms as such. The basic process is as confirmed as any scientific “fact”.What is not confirmed, and cannot be confirmed is the extrapolation that all life started from a single cell and are a result of progressive, accidental change.
Theistic evolution just involves God in the process as a guide to a greater ofr lesser extent instead of
“Survival of the fittest” or “most adapted” and especially “building the strong by removing or treading on the weak”
ToE excludes any sort of guiding or influence from God, basically because God is invisible to it. And that is the difference. Scripture claims “God created all animals according to their kind.” ToE claims otherwise.
I am not a “creationist” in the form you are used to. But I refuse to believe that humanity is a cosmic fluke.
You exaggerate, not necessarily to the quantity but the quality of the evidence. Using man made algorithms as proof does not "prove anything at all.
Evolution starts with a premis and finds ways to achieve it. That is not the scientific method.
Evolution cannot be proven without the time machine to go back and watch. It is therefore speculative. No matter how much you want it to be.
If DNA was a building brick it would produce the same results as what we see. Commonality is as much due to function as it is to heredity… And your precious 2% still amounts to several hundred differences. (Statistics are used to manipulate comparisons)
I do not believe that God would “light the blue touch paper and retire immediately” and just watch. As God is still active now there is no reason to believe that He “rested” for several millenia or more.
I know you have this thing bout power and control, but that is your view and not necessarily the expected view of God.
It is more to do with principles than methodology. But that is more esoteric than science tends to be.
Richard
There is as much conflict with meteorology as there is with evolution.
Species formation is primarily the result of differing genetic variation and differing selective pressures. It would not matter whether these differences came from natural sources or directly from God, but as a general rule most people just see them as part of the world structure (in the looses sense).
What if it were confirmed? Would you then consider evolution in the same light as meteorology?
So does meteorology. So why don’t you reject meteorology for the same reason?
3 Likes
Man made algorithms??? Our eyes, when we watch things evolve, are man made algorithms? Fossils in the strata of the earth are man made algorithms? The DNA in all the different species are man made algorithms? I don’t think so. These are the gift of God to us, and only those who close their eyes, ears, and minds refuse to see, hear, and understand what God is telling us in all of these things. These are the godless ones.
Wrong! You don’t need a time machine to see the past, all you have to do is open your eyes and all of what you see is from the past.
Incorrect. Design can only make machines and there is a huge difference between what we design and organisms which have to learn things for themselves. It is abundantly clear that most of our DNA is not involved in making us what we are. Most of it is just a record of the past so that we can see what happened. Things which are designed would not carry such a record of the past, but only what is needed to make them as they are.
What is really bizarre is making excuses for the mismatch, saying we have DNA for tails just because God wants to make fun of a few people where these come out, or the old versions of genes without our speech capabilities so that a few people cannot speak so well (God will teach them, eh?). No. If there is a plan of God in these things, it is for us to see and understand the truth of evolution.
But that is exactly what your designer watchmaker from Deism implies. If a perfect designer makes everything at the beginning, then watching is all which is left for him to do. But the role of shepherd given to the God of the Bible is quite different, corrective rather than designing or controlling. That is exactly the God of the Bible, not designing things to do as he desires, but taking corrective measures when we go too far from what He wants.
Indeed these methodological principles of science are straightforward and practical rather than esoteric.
1 Like
I’m going to propose a simple test for things that could turn a world upside down, the “Why the hell are you doing that!!!” test. Rescuing exposed infants fit that test for several reasons, among them that the rescuers were incurring the extra expense of raising the infants, that the vast majority of those rescued were girls, whom the Romans didn’t value, and that in a fair number of cases the infants at a given location were considered to be the property of one temple or another – the infants were raised to be slaves or to fill temple roles (a fascinating case was temples where the priestesses were [supposed to be] virgins and girl infants were taken to be raised within the walls of a temple compound so as to guarantee their virginity; when Christians came along and started rescuing all infants these temples suddenly had their supply of females cut off – and complaints were made to Roman authorities that these Christians were a-theists, enemies of the gods!). So whatever idea may be proposed, it should be something that will make people wonder what (these crazy) Christians are up to.
Frequently this will fit with the “Good Samaritan test”, the idea being that people are being helped who have no reason to think they would get help, at noticeable expense to the helper, and perhaps those being helped are looked down on as not worth the effort by society. When I was first in college one of the student government standing committees was in effect dedicated to this; one of their efforts was to clean and remodel houses that had deteriorated to the point that there was mildew on most surfaces and mold in most dimly-lit places. That fit both the above tests, the shock being that people would go into such places and work without bothering with the “obviously” necessary protective gear to keep from inhaling mildew and mold in buildings that were considered worthy of just being demolished (interestingly, despite all the dire warnings not a single of those volunteer workers got even mildly sick from working in such environments), and the residents of such dwellings were considered “trash” by the surrounding community (one group that tried to get the volunteer work shut down was developers who wanted to get the buildings condemned so they could acquire the property cheaply and build something for profit).
Both of these tests best fit things that happen on a personal level. I’ve related before an effort I was part of, a Lutherans for Life chapter which bluntly told other ‘pro-life’ groups that they were deceiving themselves if all they were about was political activity; this group financially supported a number of mothers who would have gotten abortions because they couldn’t afford to raise a child. One member at one point suggested adding another figure to the Good Samaritan parable: a political activists who saw the person in the ditch and promised to get a law passed to fix the situation, a suggestion that angered the members of another local pro-life group more than a little.
The other thing that comes to mind is an effort organized by a church, called “People Who Care”; I’ve mentioned it before as well: PWC members committed to at least one evening/night per week to going (in at least pairs) to local bars, wearing jackets with their logo, on the lookout for folks in need. Their activities ranged from driving people home who’d had a few drinks too many to taking people to the hospital to listening to people’s problems and acting to help; eventually word got around that here was a bunch of Christians who acted a lot like Jesus. That last reminds me that the entire congregation had to commit to this because it inevitably meant that people were going to show up at church on Sunday whose best clothes were worse than what church members might throw away, who hadn’t bathed in days, who couldn’t speak ten words without using some foul language – and those people must be welcomed!
In a not-quite so systematic way a church near where I went to grad school for a time made their own community impact: they actually debated whether they should sell the church building in order to do better ministry to the community (it was rather ostentatious inside and out), and ended up voting to instead ask the community how that building could be used to benefit people in the community. That resulted in people who’d lived nearby for years without ever thinking about setting foot in church showing up to see what the deal was with Christians who’d actually thought about selling their beautiful building if that would be good for the community, and some of those people, looking at the building, thought of things it could be used for to benefit the community that members hadn’t thought of (this also required the entire congregation committing to this as it resulted in people showing up for church in less-than-agreeable condition(s)).
A really radical move I read about was when a city council had decided the city couldn’t afford to keep running a free day-care for children of single parents; a church stepped up and committed to funding and running that day-care, even expanding its reach to include a program for “latch-key” kids whose parents both worked – a perfect fit since the church had its own small school with a gymnasium and athletic field.
These examples indicate another test: “wearing out shoe leather”, as a black Lutheran pastor in an inner-city congregation (with a wild mix of ethnicities) put it when telling people that writing a check didn’t qualify as working for the Kingdom. Whatever is chosen, it should meet needs in the community around the church (however big an area that might be) and should meet those needs in tangible ways that put members side-by-side with those in need.
Now, in terms of teleology, such efforts make their own argument because they point toward and implement “kingdom on Earth” through the “children of Abraham” being the Kingdom by “going about doing good”. Yes, that’s not the teleology the OP meant, but oh well!
2 Likes
All that proves is that you haven’t the foggiest idea about what I am talking about.
Because they aren’t the same!
How can you claim to be a scientist and not understand the difference?
If God contrlled evey drop of water that falls then there would be no weather forecasting. They would have to second guess God. He doesn’t have to! It works the way He intended it to. The watchmaker does not have to keep tinkering with the watch that works.
Evolution is nothing like meteorology!
And modern Christians do not believe what the Jews do about the weather!. (with the odd exception May he rest in peace)
Richard
Depends on the goal. If trying to convince someone God is real . . . mostly pointless. If trying to show someone that alleged arguments against God fail, it can be useful, just don’t pretend it does more than that.
Heh. The one “crystal creature” in sci-fi that I found believable wasn’t really a crystal creature, the crystal was just the matrix that supported a nervous system – the creature was essentially self-organizing impurities within the crystal.
Here we go again . . . . No, it doesn’t, and some of my atheist physics and biology professors would sigh at your suggestion because it is such a tiresomely false claim. They didn’t assume anything at all about God as far as science except to say that no one had yet come up with a way to test for divine presence or activity.
My meteorology prof would laugh and respond that the fact that at best we can make forecasts five days into the future shows that meteorology is definitely not understood, not well at all.
And ToE assumes no such thing; it doesn’t even address how nature got made, for starters – and does not rule out that evolution is “just the mechanisms God put in place”.
In fact as I have pointed out before, my meteorology prof would say that evolution is understood far better than the weather.
The two clauses are contradictory: in order to be able to exclude something, one must be able to observe and measure that something – that was pointed out firmly by one of my biology professors who was an atheist. If something is invisible, it can’t be excluded, and so far God is invisible to all human effort.
The intriguing thing is that you’re really just using arguments made by atheists who haven’t thought the matter through.
No more than astronomy “starts with a premise and finds ways to achieve it” – all science starts with premises and tests them, it’s how it works.
1 Like
It appears that you prefer it to be foggy.
Why couldn’t the same thing apply to evolution?
That would be a very untrustworthy God!
The scriptural view is that God does in fact control every drop of water that falls, He just does it according to the rules He chose.
True – meteorology suffers a great deal more from chaos and thus requires measurements we aren’t even close to being capable of making – that’s why weather forecasts aren’t really trustworthy beyond five days.
1 Like
Just like weather forecasts assume God is not involved.
Just like evolution is the mechanism God put in place to create life.
Or evolution. He is capable of creating a perfect system that generates the results that He desires.
2 Likes
I am an industrial technology and design major/minor in graduate training…this statement has me somewhat miffed.
Would you mind expanding your statement as what you have written is not explanatory enough to overcome the most obvious falisfication of it…
“that design may not apply to individual parts of a system”.
I am not sure exactly what you are trying to claim here, but it appears that you believe that what appears through observation/testing to be a “designed” system has components that are not also designed?
Honestly, thats ridiculous and the simple mouse trap example falsifies any notion of that kind of claim.
A mouse trap only works because all of its comonents are assembled according to a purposeful function…otherwise, it doesnt work nor will it ever work. The entire idea i could throw a base, fasteners, spring, latch, pressure plate, and striker into space and out pops a functioning mouse trap is absurd…*its quite obvious no amount of tries will ever produce such a result. Why should one ever conclude that a pea soup of non living chemicals would be any different? Surely you are not stupid enough to accept that the pea soup model is ok simply because we exdist? I can use the exact same argument for God…he created us because we exist and we are very complex. Given everything complex i use in my life today (mobile phone, computer, motor vehicle with abs, cruise control, electric windows, power steering, auto lane assist, crash avoidance…*) every single component of any of those systems is designed as intimetely as the overall system itself, it could be an argument for God or mother nature…but either way a purposeful intelligence.
Perhaps i am misreading your comment…however if not, your argument is inconsistent with the very technology we are using right now to communicate here.
Wasnt one of the original proponents of the teleological argument Socrates?
Now given all of the above earbashing…my concern is that non of any of the above changes the point that humans are quite happy to simply exist. The dont seem to be interested in delving into anything deeper than the first principle of Rene Descartes
“I think therefore i am”
However, i do not think its safe to use the same principle when applied to study of geology or the fossil record when determining whether or not the age of the earth according to the bible is to be taken seriously. Individuals may not delve into the depths of study in these areas, instead allowing others the do that, because life goes on anyway, however, experts applying that same principle to determining the age of the earth, the 7 day creation account, whether or not Noahs flood really happen on a global scale, whether Sodom and Gomorah were destroyed by fire…these things become a huge stumbling block when we also read in the new testament statements by apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke and Peter that agree with the literal reading for all of those things!
A logical science mind would not be drawn to believing in God because of an acceptance of biblical errors(ie Creation, Flood, Sodom & Gomarah) also supported by at least 4 New Testament Apostles writings. So one cannot simply use the argument evolution must be true and the bible wrong because i interpreted evidence that appears to suggest millions of years based on statistical analysis predicting how long it would take pea soup to eventually form a working mouse trap without intelligent design manipulating it. Then comes the really big problem…All Christians must accept Intelligent Design , the bible clearly illustrates it, then the next dilemma is…in all your life, have you ever used a designed working system that was not also manufactured?
The next time you do any of the following:
sit down to take a poop on the dunny
watch television
use cultery to eat your meal
talk with a friend on the phone
turn on the light
cut your toe nails
take you dog for a walk along a footpath
all of the above activities immerse themselves in both intelligent design and intelligent manufacture of the systems in which you are immersed.
Just because we are alive, that does not make the dilemma easier…its actually far worse when using the pea soup claim of origins.
By the way, is there not a recent scientific article published about organisms that live in ice which appear to have “devolved” into simpler and less complex entities that appear to demonstrate a loss of information?
Fine tuning provides a system for which all the individual (macro-) components don’t have to be designed because the system produces them.
1 Like
I do not have time to continue this now, I have to work today. See you later
Richard
Why do you keep trying to justify or compare Evolution with other branches of science.? Evolution stands alone like any theory. I do not accept every doctrine just because it was proposed by a reputable theologian. I fight Original Sin theory as hard as I fight ToE… It is not as if I fight all of evolutionary theory. I accept the basic principles but stop short of Common ancestry and Zero to humanity. Evolution develops and adapts, that is proven. It has yet to be proven that it can create.
Whether you like it or not God is not a part of ToE so it is godless. I do not care what stigma you attach to that phrase, it is correct.
If you place God anywhere in evolution, even invisibly it is no longer ToE it is TE.
You who hold Scripture so high denies it with ToE. If you think that you an rectify ToE with scripture you re only fooling yourself. The whole point of Genesis 1 is that God created, rather than things created themselves. God is active, not passive. Scripture also clams a design for humanity. As far as ToE is concerned we could be sentient reptiles!. ToE is random. Any change stays or goes due to its own merit and / or any competition. The only “control” is survival. It excludes any sort of deign, or outside influence for structure or form. That is contrary to scripture. God could not know David before he was formed because David would be a random selection of DNA particles!
Is humanity in the image of God? Or is that just human vanity!. ToE claims that we do not have a predestined image or form.
It is not about YEC, or literal viewing, this is about what Scripture teaches. It teaches that humanity was created specifically by God. ToE claims we are a cosmic fluke.
So make up your mind: .Scripture or ToE? You cannot have both!.
Richard
Then it would seem that we should be observing a designer putting bacterial flagella together, right?
The problem with these types of arguments is that mouse traps do not form spontaneously, but biological structures do form spontaneously.
We can determine the age of the Earth without ever referring to biology. In fact, many YEC arguments (e.g. accelerated nuclear decay) require the absence of fine tuning. YEC’s require completely different laws of physics in the past to explain away inconvenient evidence, and in doing so they throw out any claims that the laws of physics are finely balanced to allow life. You yourself have argued against the constancy of these finely tuned laws of physics every time you tell Christians to abandon uniformitarianism.
That would require an actual quantitative definition for information which I have never seen any YEC or intelligent design proponent put forward.
3 Likes
To show that Evolution is no different than any other theory in science, most of which you already accept. For those other theories you have no problem accepting natural processes, but for evolution you don’t seem to be as willing. Why?
Meteorology does not give a role to God in the process of weather, and yet you have no problem with it. Evolution treats nature in the very same way, and yet you find this to be a problem. Why?
That’s true for every single theory in science, many of which you already accept.
Scripture says that God brings the rain, and yet you accept a godless scientific theory that says nature makes rain. How do you square this?
Scripture teaches that rain is created specifically by God. Scripture teaches that God knits us together in the womb, yet I suspect you accept the science describing the natural processes involved in embryonic development.
1 Like
Also neither meteorology nor evolution excludes the involvement of God.
Nonsense. Scripture does NOT teach us HOW God created humanity. Claiming we are a cosmic fluke is no part of the theory of evolution. Why do you fabricate such a strawman? Is this about some kind of criterion of appearance or genetics by which you want to deny that some should be considered human? Is that why you insist on absolute control by God of every aspect of our existence? Or is it about making sure we all accept that God is responsible for every biological flaw and illness? Why are such things so important to you that you would exclude people who cannot believe in a God who does such things?
1 Like
The claim that Occam’s razor promotes removing God from the picture with regard to science is an error endorsed by ID and YEC as well as by those trying to use science as an excuse for their atheism. But it is based on materialistic presuppositions and overlooks significant complications in how Occam’s razor actually works in science. If you want a more lengthy discussion, you can try Essay: God, Occam, and Science
First, by saying that Occam’s razor removing God from science promotes atheism, they are assuming that science covers everything. But in reality, saying that I didn’t find God through scientific methods is like saying that I can find no evidence of intelligent agency behind your post to the forum after thoroughly analyzing the properties of the electrons and the chemical properties of the material making up the computer. If I am actually looking for intelligent agency behind the post, I need to read the post, not analyze the electrons. Science seeks to identify physical patterns in the universe, which is useful for recognizing physical patterns but not very informative about theology, ethics, aesthetics, or other important topics.
There are three major complications relating to applying Occam’s razor in science. First, a more complex model is better than a simpler one if the simple one doesn’t work. Determining the right balance between the two is a challenge. Much of mechanics is simpler if we assume a frictionless vacuum. What is noise and what is important signal?
Second, “simplicity” is not entirely simple to define. Einstein thought that Maxwell’s equations were so simple that they must be correct, even though they proved to imply counterintuitive aspects of relativity. But the reaction of the average person to Maxwell’s equations is likely to be “What on earth are all those symbols?”
Third, there is a tension between “nothing extra” and “one explanation to rule them all”. One could argue that the simplest approach to science, with no add-ons, is to simply compile massive tables of data. But having formulas that apply to lots of situations is much more convenient than having to search for an example of someone having done the exact same thing before. More comprehensive explanations are considered scientifically useful, even though in a way they constitute an addition to having lots of small-scale explanations that apply to fewer situations. For example, physics pursues grand unified theories even though we have pretty good models of the individual forces.
If we recognize that science is attempting to describe God’s ordinary ways of directing creation, we realize that God provides the universal explanation, of which science is one part.
2 Likes
“Bring forth! Bring forth!”
God commanded things to create other things.
“Things created themselves” is ancient pagan mythology, not evolution, BTW.
No “predestined image or form” is needed for the image of God – it has nothing to do with any attributes or characteristics we have, it has to do with vocation. That “in” in the “in God’s image” clause bears the meaning “as”, similar to “he works in finance” or “she works in medicine”; it’s a task and responsibility, not any attribute.
To use your own method, I could say “That’s just Moses’ opinion”.
1 Like
I never said it did.
Then you do not understand evolutionary theory, .Evolution is based upon random deviations. That means chance. That means fluke.
All or nothing? I never claimed it. ToE says nothing. I never said tht the opposite must be true.
No, .illness, and biological flaw can be part of God’s creation without it being specified either way. You are assuming that I believe God built everything individually. I do not. In fact I have never specified God’s participation, only that it must be there.
It is you imposing your views onto mine, not the other ay around. You assume… and are wrong.
I do not propose a specific methodology, I just refute the scientific (godless) one.
Richard