I think that the problem is that evry time i have suggested a “problem” in scientific or “logical” terms it has been shouted down. Usually because of my qualifications. Sometimes because it is just not an accurate description (in their eyes), but usually because my argument somehow does not apply. Believe me, I have heard it all.
I was going to do a playful comparison between the way the conspiracy theory about Concordski was sabotaged was made, and the way the theory of Evolution was constructed. A bit of fun, but it might have thrown up some interesting thoughts.
There are other philosophical models of the way the Evolutionary theory was/is made and whether there is any sort of optimism or speculation in its conclusions but they are probably not so amusing.
The problem being I tend to use analogies based on my own understanding of Evolution rather than “borrowing” them for someone else. It appears I would have more attention if I could prove that the allegory comes from a scientist, but, as I understand it, allegories are not part of scientific working, so that might be difficult.
Can I please emphasise this. I am not, ever claimng that people must agree with me, or that they are completely wrong. I do not see any of this in terms of black & white, right & wrong. That has never been my goal or reson de’tre. I look for discussion. I look for a bouncing around of ideas. I look for arguments that can be answered rather than assertions that must be agreed to. I look to create thought, not to dictate it in any shape or form.
Well this is the philosophical thread so where are these models?
Given, based on your correct understanding, that allegories are never used to prove a point why would you assume you could find one that came from a scientist that proves a point?
Analogies are not philosophies. A philosophy needs some sort of rule set, a metaphysical foundation. A philosophy needs axioms. A philosophy needs a way to define knowledge and facts. An analogy has none of those things.
If you want to claim that evolution is not a valid scientific theory, then it would seem that we need to talk about the philosophy of science. Wouldn’t you agree?
If you want to claim that science is a failed philosophy for defining knowledge about the natural world, then we could discuss that as well.
ANd I am sorry again if you do not understand bothe the tone and thrust of what has been said so far. I invited a critique of the idea of the thread and got it. The answer is clearly against it.
Sort of, but one method would be to understand the way that the Evolutionary theory was formed and measure that against the way any other Scientific theory was formed. That is not so much the philosophy of Science as a whole but the philosophy behind Evolution and whether that qualifies it to be understood in the emphatic ways other scientific theories are.
(Addressing the way people claim that there is no difference)
I am sorry (I seem to be sorry a lot here) but that answer got more and more convoluted the more I wrote it.
I would consider analogies to be a philosophical tool. Perhaps that is a conceptual mistake?
Ok… though your arguments are really theological rather than philosophical. But I will leap at your invitation since I am all about contemplating the theological implications of evolution. It has ultimately has no bearing on the validity of the scientific theory, but it is still a topic of interest in its own right – certainly one I am very much interested in.
Man is created in the image of God and you equate that to power and dominion? I certainly do not equate the image of God to any such thing. This implies that being like God means means having power and lording it over others. I don’t think this agrees with Jesus’ idea of greatness and I don’t think this is what being conformed to the image of Christ entails.
Matthew 20:25 But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. 26 It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; 28 even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve
Matthew 23 Then said Jesus to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; 3 so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice. 4 They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear,[a] and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger. 5 They do all their deeds to be seen by men; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, 6 and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues, 7 and salutations in the market places, and being called rabbi by men. 8 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brethren. 9 And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. 10 Neither be called masters, for you have one master, the Christ. 11 He who is greatest among you shall be your servant;
So what do I think being created in the image of God is about? First of all an image is not an equality but a reflection, and our reflection of the infinite actuality of God is to be found in our infinite potentiality. It the basis for an eternal parent-child relationship, for it mean that there is no end to what God has to give and no end to what we can receive from Him. This is the substance of eternal life. And after all, creating in your own image, is what the creation of children is all about.
Therefore I think this power and dominion stuff is more in image of “the god of this world.” It is pretty much the lie of serpent in the garden, and the natural conclusion of those twisting of religion into a tool of power over others as the Pharisees did and Jesus condemned. Yes God gave mankind dominion over the earth. But in retrospect, maybe that part was a mistake. For it just means we are constantly teetering on the brink of destroying the earth completely. It would be a different matter entirely if we saw ourselves as the servants, guardians, and stewards of the earth rather than its rulers.
Incorrect. It has a very clear goal of learning what is advantageous for survival within the rules by which this world operates. And what has been learned is that the most effective survival strategy is cooperation – precisely the strategy which human beings have mastered to a greater degree than any other. Such is the basis of human science and technology.
But that is just the scientific theory of evolution, which says nothing about the involvement of God. And most here very much believe in the involvement of God in what we have become. Not by the mechanistic design and control of a Deistic machine engineer, but by the instructive guidance of the Biblical shepherd. This is not because evolution doesn’t work but because God created the universe for a relationship and not just to watch as in Deism.
Huh??? But evolution did produce reptiles, amphibians, and crustaceans. But it also produced viruses, protozoa, plants, worms, insects, mammals, primates, and hominids (altogether about 8.7 million different species). But I don’t understand this thinking that you could be one of these other species any more than I can make sense of the atheist argument that you could have been a Muslim or Hindu. How could these other animals or people be you? That would be a different animal or person!
Furthermore, if God has to be a control freak with absolute power over what He creates then He is basically too cowardly and self-absorbed to be worthy of my worship.
For me the critical question is… CAN God create something He does not control or is his power limited to that of the boy down the block with absolute power over his own daydreams? And if God CAN create something He does not control then would He dare to do so? With the idea of greatness which Jesus describes, it seems likely that He would. Not only that, but the Bible says He did.
Huh? The theory of evolution says no such thing. It is no different than any of the other laws of nature. There is no God variable in the equation for gravity, no God variable in the equations for electricity and magnetism, no God variable in any of the sciences, not in physics or chemistry any more than biology.
This is because the purpose of the sciences is to discover the rules of how this world works. And no God is not part of those rules to be manipulated and controlled according to some equation. God is naturally outside the laws of nature which He created as part of the structure of the universe to run automatically. For He is a carpenter who knows His work, making a table with the nails and dowels needed for it to stand on its own as a functional creation.
And that is all that evolution is too. Just how the process of life goes by default. It doesn’t mean God is excluded or cannot do anything. But it does suggest that His role is more the corrective one of a shepherd and teacher dealing with living things rather than the designer of a machine.
That is Deism not evolution. It is Deism which gave birth to this notion of God as a great watchmaker who created only dead things like a big wind up toy to watch it go, for when everything is just a machine then it is absurd to try having a relationship with any of it.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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40 years of preaching vs. 4 billion years of evolution. It’s got a way to go.
Sorry, I wrongly took belief in God for granted and also stance that Evolution doesn’t contradict the Bible as granted which upon review doesn’t seem to apply to the author (Evolution part). In this case if one thinks that Evolution contradicts God’s existence and there is no way to interpret it well then indeed one can assume he doesn’t exist.
Why would God not be able to know what results will Evolution arrive on? If he exists he made it to complete a task and there’s no reason for results of Evolution to be hidden from God. It’s also quite weird to assume that all it takes to be in image of God is to be the “highest life form” whatever that means. And even if there was some system in universe that was so chaotic that God couldn’t predict it why would he be unable to still affect his universe?
That’s some weird kind of slippery slope, assuming so many unrelated things from one argument(What does self-sustainability of universe have with salvation?). Or maybe there’s some internal arguments that you just didn’t share.
You are assuming Evolution to be wrong from the start, is there really no hope for Evolution to fit in God’s plan?
For all theories in science, we start with first principles. These are the basic laws and mechanisms that the theory proposes. We then extrapolate those laws and mechanisms so we can predict what we should and, most importantly, should not observe in nature based on those extrapolations. This is called hypothesis testing, and it is the very foundation of the scientific method.
For example, the first principles of general relativity, as described by Einstein, are the equations that define spacetime curvature. From those first principles you can predict that light will bend around objects with mass. This extrapolation was first tested during a solar eclipse, and the extrapolation held up. Starlight was bent around the Sun.
We test evolution in the very same way. Among the first principles of evolution (at least for eukaryotes) are vertical inheritance, random mutation with respect to fitness, natural selection, and neutral drift. From those first principles we can predict that we should see a nested hierarchy if species share a common ancestor. This nested hierarchy applies to both DNA sequence and physical characteristics. What do we see? Exactly what the theory predicts, a nested hierarchy. More accurately, we see the twin nested hierarchies of DNA sequence and morphology.
Evolution is tested in the very same way that all scientific theories are tested.
The philosophy behind evolution is no different than the philosophy behind every single theory in science.
Analogies can be a useful tool for illustrating individual ideas within a philosophy. However, there still needs to be some groundwork before the analogies will make sense.
It seems that your philosophy boils down to rejecting scientific theories if they contradict your understanding of the Bible. It isn’t a matter of scientific evidence, logic, or rational conclusions. Rather, you will blindly reject any theory that goes against your religious beliefs.
This seems to parallel the Galileo Affair, where Galileo was accused of heresy for daring to propose Heliocentrism which went against the biblical interpretations held by the RCC clergy.
“First, . . . to want to affirm that in reality the sun is at the center of the world and only turns on itself without moving from east to west, and the earth . . . revolves with great speed about the sun . . . is a very dangerous thing, likely not only to irritate all scholastic philosophers and theologians, but also to harm the Holy Faith by rendering Holy Scripture false.”–Cardinal Bellarmine, 1615
I am talking in terms of reaching a cognisant level. If Evolution is really random then it is possible for a reptile to become bipedal and fully cognisant with speach etc (like a Cardassian in Star Trek) making the reptile the top species. (as opposed to homo)
The fact that no other species, let alone type of creature can match Homo Sapiens must mean something. Surely Evolution could develop a crustacean to be comparable to a human in capabilities? It is only a matter of the right deviations! Or ist it? In theory (evolutionary) they have had more time than Mammals.
No, you are still trying to generalise rather than be specific. I have no beef with any other scientific theory. And my beef with Evolution is not solely Religious. Religion may drive me but it does not dictate that I will/have found the relevant criticisms.
There is irony here in line with my comments about how the heredity connections were found but I am anot convinced I can explain it in a manner that you would either accept or understand.
This conversation has been fragmented across multiple threads so it would be helpful if you could repeat how/why you think heredity connections came to be.
Admitted this could be deemed conspiracy theory, but
Evolutionary theory needed to prove that there was a connection from one species to another for it to join and develop. To give it purpose and to “prove” it was correct.
Heredity was looked for, because Evolution demanded it. The connections were “seen” as expected
Evolution is verified by Heredity. Heredity is verified by Evolution. Neither can stand solely without the other to prop it up in terms of value and existence. It becomes a self-fulfilling paradox.
I have been told that the heredity connections were “found” without reference to Evolution but I doubt very much whether that can be proven without doubt.
(My little Analogy with the two Concorde designs might illustrate this)