I am 100% certain that your opinion about how I include God in my understanding of the universe He created is 100% irrelevant.
I have never accused you of unbelief, because you do not have the understanding of what God’s universe is that I do, and do not seem able to grasp some very interesting aspects of God that can be much more clearly seen through the viewpoint of modern cosmology and theoretical physics. I do get it that you need to believe things that you think you understand. I just request that you give the benefit of a doubt to someone like me, who understands the world God created from a different perspective than you seem able to comprehend.
You are wrong when you generalize on people’s ability to observe. I can quickly and easily switch the image from old hag to beautiful woman, and back, at will, by slight change of point of focus. You are just as wrong when you accuse all scientists of bias when you have no evidence whatsoever.
I think we have finally gotten Richard to explicitly state the real point of dissension! And then it becomes evident that his position is wrong, by demonstration! The point that God has made, by the way He created this earth, whenever He created it, is that He has put in sufficient evidence into His creation so that there is no absolute objective proof that He had to be intervening in the process after the first formation of life. God either put or allowed the evidence to be present; God either set the world into such perfectly orchestrated motion that He didn’t have to intervene again to make every single thing develop exactly as He wanted, or He did actually intervene in extremely subtle ways, without leaving objective evidence of His intervention. As you said, @RichardG, there is no proof either way.
As for your claim that God could not have set things into motion and not needed to intervene, what basis do you have for that claim? (This is a straightforward logical conclusion that must be true if nontheistic evolution is mutually exclusive from God.) I believe in a God who knew what He was doing, so well that He could leave it ambiguous to us as to how He did what He did. I really wish you (@RichardG) would give me the benefit of a doubt, and admit that God did what God thought was best, and there is no way we can prove exactly how God created this world, and guided it to the exact state that it is in today, including this (at times, much too antagonistic) discussion among Christians. I do believe there is a passage somewhere about Jesus being here (two or three are gathered together…). Can we try to restore a Christian tone to the discussion? At least from all the Christians involved?
Given that God uses weather to effect changes, He could well use a perfectly-aimed cosmic ray to achieve the mutations He desires, in which case scientists could witness God intervening and yet see just a cosmic ray triggering a mutation.
If you want to compare the theory of evolution with a murder investigation . . .
There are many bodies, we know mostly what order they were killed in, and we know the family relationships between the dead.
Thermodynamics – yay!
I wish I’d been up to take the thermo course sequence when the regular professor was teaching it instead of a substitute who insisted on requiring math over a year more advanced than what the course description in the catalog required; thermo started out fun and probably would have continued that way if he’d stuck to the third-year calculus math we all actually knew.
Or . . . some believe in God because they grasped that we are all descended from one original organism.
Yes! My biggest frustration is that Richard uses science to interpret the scriptures and wants to use God to be included in science, and the result is sloppy science and sloppy theology. He also doesn’t seem able to grasp the difference between the fact that science has no way to measure God and thus cannot include God (and still be science) and banishing God from science. Honest atheist scientists will acknowledge that they have no means to exclude God, and honest theists will acknowledge that they have no scientific means for including God, and thus honest scientists recognize that God must be left out of the picture in order to do actual science.
Ever played Advanced Mastermind? There are five holes in a line that can be filled with pegs that come in eight colors. The “codemaker” chooses pegs to put into the holes, then the “codebreaker” seeks to guess/deduce the sequence, with specific feedback from the codemaker after each guess.
Evolution is a “belief” on par with the “belief” that one has guessed the code in Mastermind correctly after a dozen guesses when reasoning from the feedback.
That’s what it means to have a theory: it is an explanation that covers all known phenomena that it covers, so the only possible way to proceed is to treat the theory as true until evidence is found that the explanation is either wrong or must be adjusted – that’s true in every field of science and is why astronomy/cosmology is so much fun; standing theories get toppled quite frequently. In biology, though, the core of the theory just gets shown to be true over and over while secondary aspects get adjusted from time to time.
And sadly for my professors who devoted huge amounts of effort to find exceptions, there just hasn’t been anything found that challenges the core of the theory; the best achieved has been to tweak things here and there.
I used this analogy before but it’s pertinent again: saying that the evidence affirms short-term evolutionary progression but is not evidence for long-term progression is like admitting that bricks can be put together and held in place by mortar but denying that there can possibly be a brick wall. In both cases we have lots of bricks, and the way(s) they go together point to not just the possibility but the reality of brick walls.
It’s considered definitive because researchers have observed steady changes in DNA that eventually produce new species, and the DNA where that happens is not some huge radical step but the same steady changes that have been found in thousands of living species. This has been used to predict what missing intermediate forms should be like, and at this point there are not just one prediction confirmed but several.
I have no right not to – I am bound by the admonition of the Apostle.
So you now say that Paul was wrong when he said to test every spirit and see which are from God and which aren’t – or you’re saying that Paul insulted the bride of Christ.
You just keep digging the hole deeper, calling good evil and evil good, claiming God can be evil, now claiming that false teachers must be allowed in the church because they are part of “God’s holy bride to which Christ is the high Priest”. According to the Apostles, they are not.
So you’re the sole judge of truth here? and I’m supposed to ignore the admonitions of the Apostle to judge all things?
Though there was an “original sinner” there was only an initial sin; Augustine went too far in his gloominess.
And you haven’t supplied anything, neither scientific nor theological, as to why “a forbidden fruit … cannot exist in reality”.
See above. I did no such thiing. That illusion is well documented, as are the reactions to it.
I have no problem with what you believe. I do have a problem with anyone who needs me to also beleive it. You are free to try and show me what you see. Perhaps I am not scientific enough or lack the…
I wonder, can you understand what I see? Do you even know what I see?
You stated as if it was your opinion that I would see one or the other, and would have difficulty seeing the other after I had seen one. Maybe you were trying to repeat what you had heard, and really did have the opinion that someone could see it differently, but that is not what you said! And whether you believe that the generality that has been reported is valid for everyone, or not, I am trained in observing, and am able to observe both, and change at will between them.
Why does what you say sound like you are pretending that you know better what I am seeing than I claim to see?
Have you read what I have been writing? Have you read what anyone writes? I haven’t asked you to believe anything different, have explicitly acknowledged that what you believe is potentially valid. I have only requested that you acknowledge that what others believe might also be true, and that you recognize that just because you believe something, that doesn’t make it of necessity true for everyone else, even if they don’t believe the same as you do.
I do understand that what you see is distorted by your human limitations. (Please note that I do not intend “distortion due to human limitations” as a personal comment; distortion due to human limitations does apply to all humans, including myself. That is why I try to suggest that people consider what I say, and incorporate some of the thoughts into their own understanding, if they feel it is applicable.) Do I know what you see, in absolute detail? No. Do I accept that you have a relationship with God, that is between you and Him? Absolutely.
Do you grant me the same acceptance, that God knows me better than you do? Are you willing to accept me as a Christian, and treat me as such?
I think it was this thread where I pointed out that God could achieve desired mutations in ways that scientists could see happening but never recognize God at work. I used cosmic rays as an example, but radioactive decay works as well, as do tunneling electrons; all God has to do is make a particle that was going to move by take a trajectory so as to strike some DNA just right, and He has done His work (once again) in hiding. Scientists would never recognize the divine at work because there is no way to predict such particle trajectories, and the result of that is that God at work is hidden right in plain sight!
That itself makes evolution astounding; it’s one thing to design a system so elegant as to keep bringing forth life, another still to arrange the workings of that system so that the Designer could step in and intervene without ever being detected.
That’s why no single thing ever tipped the views of my fellow students in our informal intelligent design club; individual events only point to the Designer in aggregate, in how they interact – it’s the system design that is supremely elegant enough that for some at least it practically screams, “This was designed!”
I wish Richard would put in the effort to actually understand evolution and see that it is a system more sublime than anything in cosmology, such that if the heavens declare the glory of God then DNA and mutations and inheritance do so even more!
I have never claimed anyone here not to be Christian
It would appear that no matter what I write it gets twisted.
The picture I showed is a well-known illusion If you can see through it that does not change the reason for putting it there. However you have not understood that reason (deliberately or otherwise)
Go and enjoy your “Christian” persecution of me. I am bowing out for now.
But before I go I will leave you with 1 thought
You claim scientific authority, I acknowledge it.
I claim Christian authority, you deny it.
I wonder whether that is because, at least in this case, you knew what to look for?
I see both, but I know the illusion. I can assure you that without the prompting people will see one or the other and once seen they find it difficult to see the other.
Whether this does or does not apply to the viewing of data is probably an unhealthy (or at least uncomfortable) suggestion.
Having said that, I have found no discussion of the DNA sequencing that even broaches any other conclusions let alone suggest that there might be any… Perhaps you know differently?
I go to churches where the ministers take on the role of helping their parishoners to improve their own understanding of who God is, and helping their parishoners improve their relationships with God and their neighbors.
I was brought up in a fundamentalist branch of the Christian church where the bible was accepted as absolute truth, and the ministers were acknowledged as the proper interpreters of the bible. By the grace of God, I have been led from that situation to where I am now, a much better place.
No, Richard, I do not grant you, or any other human, Christian authority over me and my conscience. I do listen to what you have to say, and try to understand what I think you mean, and then I do think about whether what you say means anything to me. I do acknowledge that you are free to believe what you believe, that what you believe differently from what I believe is not essential for Christian faith. I do not hear you acknowledging that anyone else’s position is acceptable to God.
I also do state without reservation that I have gotten some value from your comments, including the interaction with others in this thread. One important thing has become clarified to me, reinforcing something I already knew from my systems engineering background: Any discussion of a complicated issue without a very careful and clear definition of all the terms being used is invariably subjected to very large misunderstandings.
coming in late after a 6month break due to a broken computer
Evolution is a process with the purpose to aid the propagation of life. It is not at all a random process but uses random mutation to achieve adaptation. It is controlled by a feedback loop called survival fitness which has a rather large time constant. It is not how some people think about who fu*** and feeds fastest, but who is best in supporting. thy neighbours like thyself, e.g. who is altruistic and thus of use to the system instead of the self which tends to lead to population collapse.
In other words, the process is controlled by what we refer to as “the word of God”
Bottom line, Natural Selection is about leaving the most surviving progeny, relative to others in the population. Natural Selection cannot be based on “altruism” defined as refraining from individual reproduction for the sake of supporting others or the group. This is because an allele for “cheating”, i.e., to maximize one’s own progeny will always outcompete (and out reproduce) those that voluntarily refrain from reproduction, driving altruists to extinction. This doesn’t mean that cooperation can’t occur within populations, but there must always be a net-benefit coming to the individual cooperator for such behavior to evolve.
That was not my claim. I claim the authority of the church, but it would seem that means something different to you.
That is not the definition of Authority I use. That is the military version. It is not my function to tell you what to believe (contrary to most people here)
All I claim is that my theology is endorsed by the church, however it is not Black & white theology, that is one specific interprtation for any one thing, including the use of Scripture.
As a preacher my role is to give the orthodox (and any other) viewpoint and leave it to you to decide what, if any of it to accept. Quite of then there is a wide spectrum of views that are all acceptable. (Horror of horrors!) There are also views that are classed as heresies.
Please note, I have not classed any opinion here as heretical.
I hope this clarifies my position. To be honest I find much of the stuff here over dogmatic and aggressive. People argue, they do not discuss.
A different principle is involved in the case of wolves, that of Kin Selection. So, the wolves that are not reproducing in the pack are still passing on genes to the next generation indirectly, by helping close relatives (typically their parents or siblings) reproduce. The subordinate wolves choose to stay in the pack with the dominant reproductives because this is better than they could do by striking off as solitary individuals: 1) by cooperatively hunting, the group can get more (and larger prey) than hunting indvidually, and 2) the subordinates still get some genetic progeny indirectly by helping relatives. Oh and 3) by sticking around with the group there is a chance that they will succeed to the “alpha” breeding level once the current pack leaders die.
Physiologically, I’m not sure what the mechanism is. I guess the dominance hierarchy “fear”? somehow suppresses subordinate females from coming into heat.
