Correct. It has no need to whatsoever.
Again correct. Reason cannot do that. Between every transmitter and receiver of signal there is noise, and in them; and incoherence is in the minds of both of course. To the end of sufficing. As in encompassing (material) eternity. Whether that is unknowably, yet desirably, in God.
Would it be a correct answer to the question posed in this thread, to say the direction of evolution is toward the best fit with current local conditions?
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I like your answer, from a scientific viewpoint.
But if one is a Christian who endorses Evolution, the answer would be much more Byzantine!:
the direction of Evolution is whichever way Godâs guidance takes Evolution!
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I guess it really does depend on how you random.
One way I think about it is like this.
You have a movie where several years of a persons life is condensed down into a two hour film. While watching the movie, we know itâs being guided. There is a script. We can see all the coincidences in that movie. We see how because of this choice the person made they went to this store and because they both just happened to like this thing their hands bumped and then the rest of the typical romantic comedy stuff happens.
If there was this invisible drone that followed someone for ten years you would see the same things happening. Random chance, random hand touching, random common interests and so on and they fall in love and have all the same problems as the couple in the movie but one is guided by a script and one is just random.
We know the difference. But if some alien life force that had no concept of films or selfies and so on came to earth and found a bunch of home movies and a bunch of films and brought a home made movie back and questioned a human on it and they explained just the home movie part and then the aliens left they could just assume all the films weâre simply slices of different peoples life.
To me evolution is kind of like both of them. Itâs random things that are happening. Just coincidences and can basically all be explained away as such. But for me the billions of coincides from the creation of the universe, to how earth was formed, to natural selection and so on just seems a bit to directed.
For me thatâs as close as I can get to hammering it out. Any single one coincidences is explainable or we can have reasonable belief and doubt about it and that one day it will be better explainable. But the multitudes of those coincidences is what is dining. It explainable to me. They generate enough reasonable doubt in it all being luck of the draw that I can personally justify my faith.
Romans 1:20 (NASB)
20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
To me thatâs the truth. My interpretation of what I see is evidence to me that there is a creator. Itâs faith. You can see a Old tree bent in the forest towards a long gone tribal ground. You can believe that itâs just condolence. That it was not made by a native and grew that way. You could definitely come up with a dozen reasonable other reasons afterall we see trees bent in crazy ways out in natire all the time. You can also come up with reasonable arguments on why you believe it was a native bent tree.
So no I donât think that evolution is guided like how we as humans can intervene and change things. I also donât think that itâs completely random and God does not intervene in some way.
I have no clue how. I only care so much. Not having a complete picture is irrelevant to what I choose to have my faith in. I donât ever expect to be able to give a 100% bullet proof scientific explanation. I donât think science will ever actually be how someone is led towards a god. I think science at best can ease a persons mind by allowing them to have reasonable doubt in just complete randomness to where they soften their heart to the gospel.
Anthropic Principle: The strong anthropic principle (SAP), as explained by John D. Barrow and Frank Tipler, states that this is all the case because the universe is in some sense compelled to eventually have conscious and sapient life emerge within it. from the Wikipedia
Humans that that evolution was guided to produce themselves. The Anthropic Principle says that this is true. Theology says that God created humans is Godâs own Image, which is practically the same thing.
The theory of ecological evolution explains how this happens, God created the universe as the home of humans, and created evolution to favor rational beings so we were produced by this process.
While S. J. Gould is a respected biologist, he is not the last word on this topic.
Convergent evolution creates analogous structures that have similar form or function but were not present in the last common ancestor of those groups. Wiki Convergent evolution strengthens ecological evolution, because it indicates that similar habitats produce similar adaptations. The monkeys in Africa are âvery close to what we see nowâ in the monkeys in the New World, even if they are not the same.
History and evolution are different in that history is the result of choices by rational people. The French are adverse to borrowing foreign words, while the Americans and English do it all the time. Even so they are both Indo-European languages as a many others and can be clearly identified as such.
Evolution is not random. We do not have fish living on the land. All species are closely adapted to their habitat.
The Big Bang Theory indicates God created the universe and the Anthropic Principle says yes
You donât think that the creation of humanity looks as if it were rationally directed?
God created evolution to create Humans in Godâs Own Image. Now that humans have come of age so to speak, we are guiding the universe and evolution into the toilet. .
Science does not make statements about God, but it does confirm that the universe is rational or knowable, even though it cannot think. The question then is : From whence does this rationality come? By the process of elimination, if it did not come from nature, or humanity, it must come from God.
I donât see why a Christian couldnât think the current conditions were being guided in such a way to direct evolution. For that matter perhaps with a divine eye and a steady hand the first cue ball could be struck in a way that ensured the result without further fussing. But the bottom line is, if anything is directing the course of evolution what it is and how it does it is just beyond our reckoning. Attempting to tease out Godâs special recipe from the Bible is probably a long shot too.
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Anthropocene current conditions? And what divine mutation could it be? I love Greg Bearâs fantasy one in Darwinâs Radio. Which has a sublime conversation between a Bertrand Russell - Richard Dawkins level atheist and God.
No. Nothing is directed. I very much doubt even the dimensionless and other fundamental physical constants are. They are what they have to be for deterministic reasons of efficiency, elegance. Order does not imply meaning. Even existence itself does not. None of which denies God.
God desires and values childlike hearts. Little children donât think existence is meaningless, because itâs not. We were created for joy in a reciprocally loving Father-child relationship. That also refutes your âNothing is directedâ claim.
It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.â
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Not in the slightest as I already said.
So you are just repeating yourself? That doesnât exactly support your argument.
As you didnât read it the first time, no.
Donât be silly.
That implies direction, and it also denotes that, yes, I did read your claim the first time.
Iâm sorry you are as old as you are. Iâm older than you, but younger.
Yaaaairs. It happens with ageâŚ
Then why is there only one such rational species out of millions of species on Earth?
Why are vertebrates so much different than squid and starfish?
Mutations are random (scientifically speaking). This means if you took two genetically identical populations and isolated them from each other you would have two different looking populations after millions of years. This is because the outcome is, in part, due to random mutations.
In my opinion, from the interaction of quantized particles. When they interact there has to be an outcome, and if these particles have the same physical properties then the outcomes will be predictable. This is where a rational universe comes from.
I would be interested in hearing how you determined that rationality did not come from nature.
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(I didnât mean that I was in my second childhood. That probably starts next year.)
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Natural selection is âdirectedâ towards survival
And yet also, the claim & allegation is, at some point, the God in heaven intervened into natural selection on earthâŚ
so âcultivatingâ some aspects (and âcullingâ others) â this would be reflected in the ancient & widespread belief that heavenly powers ârewardâ their faithful followers (âcarrotâ) and âpunishâ apostates (âstickâ)âŚ
so as to impose âsuper-natural selectionâ on earthâŚ
Adam, modern humanity, and Jesus Christ would, then, be the result of âsuper-natural selectionâ (variation on earth + selection influenced by heaven)âŚ
not purely natural-only selection (as if in the absence of all heavenly, other-worldly influences)
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