I tried to find the book but being old it is over $100 in cost. I can understand what you are saying to a degree in the case of biological organisms. They behave that way as a system. But I always was under the impression that all the behaviors are explicable by underlying physics and chemistry, if we ever could map out all the initial conditions and everything happening (something we never will be able to).
As far as weather phenomenon being self-organizing, are you referring to crystal formation in clouds? I took atmospheric physics and atmospheric thermodynamics in college. What makes supercooled water turning into ice crystals that branch out obey anything other than electrostatic interactions as a result of the ever changing localized humidity and temperatures in clouds? Is it self-organizing because its simply too complicated for us to predict the exact pattern the snowflake will form before hand on a molecular basis? When we say snowflake formation is a non-linear, non-equilibrium process where nano-scale processes play a significant roll in the exact shape it develops into, are we saying that we are unable to predict exact snowflake development because of technological limitations or that science in fact says no matter what technology we have it is impossible? If we possessed infinite computing power and knew infinite conditions perfectly, then we still couldnât predict it exactly, only generally based on probability? Quantum uncertainty maybe? Is that the idea? We have morphology diagrams relating supersaturation levels to temperature which indicate the general type of snowflake that will form. So there seems to certainly be an underlying physical process that is extremely sensitive to humidity and temperature. When I was studying weather forecasting and looking at winter snowfall events, I specially remember looking at skew-T diagrams and analyzing the profile in the dendritic growth zone (-10 to -20C). This type or snowflake accumulates more than others so getting that right could be the difference between a good and bad forecast. Of course, this was not very consistent as the starting conditions going into our models just werenât good enough to keep up with what we knew about cloud microphysics. Yes, we will never know all the changing conditions (humidity and temperature or collisions) of an ice crystal in a cloud. Is this where you are going? What am I missing? Maybe I am still stuck in the clockwork universe. Itâs just science is so darn good at explaining things. Thanks.
This makes my point I believe. Scripture makes it clear that the Father, also known as the one true God, raised Jesus from the dead. Jesus didnât raise himself as far as I am aware. I am sure I could find a whole host of references saying God or his Spirit resurrected Jesus. Best we can do for Jesus resurrecting himself is the unhistorical statement in John 2:18-19 where Jesus says âdestroy this temple and I will raise it up in three days.â
Jesus is that GOD who raised him from the dead. He is GOD, fully and thoroughly, whether Heâs in a womb, pinned to some boards, or dead in a tomb. Whatever GOD is, Jesus is. He became a helpless baby and if I had picked him up, I would have the GOD of the universe in my hands, a tiny, little human baby was GOD. He never stopped being who He was. There are things we donât understand.
When Jesus was spotted by the demoniac, immediately his demons recognized him and pleaded for mercy. You make an important point. Language is not an adequate tool to express clearly Who and what GOD is, exactly. Words fail. Some were with Jesus day in and day out for decades and didnât recognize that He was GOD. Amazing. But, creatures who had been with him before the world began, knew who He was immediately.
He is infinite because of Who He is. Infinity isnât GOD. GOD is love. Love is not GOD. He is more than the attributes we can affix to him. Though a baby, He was perfectly, truly, completely the GOD of all. Pure gold is gold inside and out regardless whether it is used in a coin, a filling, a trophy, or found in a nugget or as microscopic particles.
Explicable? That is a term that can mean almost anything. Determined and causally closed is another matter entirely. It is simply not the case that the underlying physics and chemistry determine all the behaviors. One of the things established in chaotic dynamics by Ilya Prigogine is that determining the outcome of a nonlinear system can take the specification of the initial conditions to an infinite degree of precision. You can see it visually in the exploration of things like the Mandelbrot set with new vistas of complexity no matter how much you zoom in on it. But we know from quantum physics that there simply is no such thing as an infinite degree of precision. Thus the exploration of nonlinearity and chaotic dynamics in computer simulations can give you a false impression because the infinite degree of precision in computer calculations is not reflected in the quantum reality in which we exist.
Tornadoes and hurricanes are example, though one of the best examples is the red spot on Jupiter. Much like a living organism they maintain themselves by absorbing energy from their environment. The are part of their own causality rather than simply being a result of external conditions. The weather in general is not ultimately predictable requiring an exponentially increasing calculation and quantity of data for incremental increases in the how far in the future you want to forecast. Ultimately, it is subject to a butterfly effect, where the smallest fluctuations can be selectively amplified over time until it effects the weather of the whole planet.
It is more the other way around or from the same root cause. They are nonlinear because of amplifying causal feedback which is what makes them too complicated to predict (even infinitely so). This ultimately makes them unpredictable in principle because of quantum physics where we have proven that hidden variable determining the outcome of events do not even exist.
That nonlinear amplifying causal feedback includes the possibility for self-amplification, where a dynamic process can stabilize itself. But in addition to static formations it can respond to environmental changes in a way modeled by the bifurcation phenomenon. Where the system chooses among a multitude of possibilities. Add two more things, that of a learning algorithm and an information storage mechanism and you have the basic mechanics of life.
Whether this is true of snowflake development, I do not know. But yes the point is that because of the discoveries of Ilya Prigogine (chaotic dynamics) and John Stewart Bell (quantum physics) this is not just a matter of technological limitation.
Exactly!
Many fine scientists have rebelled at these scientific results. This is not a gap which exists because science hasnât explored it yet, but a gap like black hole which science itself is forcing us to accept.
Lawrence W. Levineâs article, âThe Unpredictable Past: Reflections on Recent American Historiographyâ [Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 94, No. 3 (Jun., 1989), pp. 671-679], opens with these words:
Reading this threadâs OP, Iâd say âthe craft of the historian is still in a state of crisis.â
Emboldened by othersâ conjectures, I decided to offer a few of my own:
To begin, I propose that Genesis 1-3 is an allegory (allegory, veiled language , allegorical exposition of mythical legends", Plu.2.19e.)
Now, in the 21st century, mathematical knowledge has evolved and is becoming better known, so much so that the veil over reality is beginning to be lifted. Unfortunately, IMO, work remains to be done to remove the veil completely.
Catastrophe Theory â In mathematics, catastrophe theory is a branch of bifurcation theory in the study of dynamical systems; it is also a particular special case of more general singularity theory.
Bifurcation theory studies and classifies phenomena characterized by sudden shifts in behavior arising from small changes in circumstances, analyzing how the qualitative nature of equation solutions depends on the parameters that appear in the equation. This may lead to sudden and dramatic changes, for example the unpredictable timing and magnitude of a landslide, orâI sayâthe consequences of the first sin.
That ordinary humans fail to recognize and acknowledge the allegorical nature of Genesis 1-3 should come as no surprise to anyone who understands that it is. The challenge posed by suggesting that Jesus was unaware of that allegorical nature, however, goes to the heart of who he was and is.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
89
No it canât. Can not. Not by science. Not by any scientist. And God is not constrained by our allegories. This is a uniquely American cultural artefact.
The notion of a miraculous creation of A&E cannot be evaluated by science, just as the notion of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth cannot be evaluated by science.
Just as science cannot rule out the resurrection of Jesus, it cannot rule out a miraculous creation of A&E.
Regards,
Chris
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
91
It doesnât work like that Chris. The claim of incarnation is the only one that matters. Nothing else comes close or is validated by it.
He is not providing any validation for it. Only claiming that science canât refute it. His statement is technically correct but science also canât refute an Invisible Pink Unicorn or Flying Spaghetti monsters if we are allowed to evoke supernatural principles. Maybe God made all the light in transit and the universe with the appearance of age? Maybe it was made two seconds ago.
The question you should be asking him is âwhat justification or evidence do you have that any of the Garden narrative should be regarded as historical and what compels you to believe it? How do you determine what is true and false within it when it clearly seems to look like and fit it well with hundreds of other prescientific creation myths?â
You canât disprove someone who claims âGod did it.â You can provide a rational alternative and simply not believe them. Itâs a defensive and unfalsifiable position which is pretty much par for any apologetics course.
Vinnie
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
93
Och no Vinnie, I have no question. People have to believe in A&E because of the way they believe in Jesus. My wanting to believe in Him cannot affect science.
Yes that is why. A&E are force fitted because of other accepted views. But his statement that the whole universe could have ran its course the way cosmology says and life could have ran its course the way evolution says but that God also specially created two people in a garden 6,000 years ago cannot be falsified. He is correct. He was saying his beliefs on this can be consistent and accepted alongside belief in mainstream science. If you believe in a God capable of supernatural miracles, this is axiomatic. Maybe I am misinterpreting his comment though.
Vinnie
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
95
No Iâm sure youâre right, but again the categories, qualities, sigmas of the non-falsifiable claims just arenât comparable.
Furthermore
The notion is easily evaluated by science. Shoe-horning in genealogical A&E, in to the 10x longer lineage of behaviourally modern evolved humans 6025 years ago, for some bizarre pretext, is bad science fiction.
I agree completely on it looking like bad science fiction from that perspective. From a Biblically based perspective itâs a forced compromise between science and scripture.
None the less, the claim cannot be scientifically disproven. Only rejected as being absurd but those grappling with what they perceive the truth of scripture and the truth of science to be donât see potential harmonizations as absurd. There is a recent thread about faith and belief that this whole process ties into.
In the end, most people justify whatever position they are currently locked into intellectually, regardless of how absurd it looks to others.
Yet, itâs essential truth is not a claim that science can investigate. It is outside of the purview of science.
Vinnie
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
97
I say science denies any truth âvalueâ for it whatsoever. Apart from completely and utterly untrue and unnecessary for any reason whatsoever. Unless weâre saying it has the same truth value as Russellâs teapot. Compared to the claim of incarnation, itâs that trivial.
You are interpreting exactly as I intended. Thanks! I am heartened that I am expressing myself with at least minimal clarity.
My intent is to help those who are locked into a particular hermeneutic about A&E to see that they can accept the science of evolution without changing their A&E hermeneutic. Itâs like Paul saying he had become a Jew to the Jews and a Greek to the Greeks (I Corinthians 9:19). Donât make the Greeks become circumcised in order to accept the gospel, and donât make the A&E literalists change hermeneutics to accept the science of evolution.
Thank you all for this discussion, and thank you all for being so civil with one another! It does a body good to participate in reasonable argument.
Do most of you agree that there was a point in history when God miraculously changed what was essentially an animal to a self aware being? Or, how do you account for consciousness?
Thank you. That is a fascinating discussionâat least what I could understand. I was hoping to leave that rabbit hole unmolested, and allow everyone to just answer my query regardless of their opinion on what constitutes consciousness. Maybe Iâm being naive to think we can do that.
Perhaps I should have asked my question in low res: Did God make us different at some point?
Iâm not personally convinced that such a clean point or dividing line could be found. Reality and science both tend to be hard on our desire for category boundaries. Witness the historical trends of how our growing discovery and understanding has gone: In cosmology we used to think in terms of planets, moons, asteroids and stars. Now we are aware of so many objects that blur between planet, planetoid, asteroid, etc. And even between gas giants, failed stars, and small to large stars. In biology there was âlivingâ and ânon-livingâ. Now we are aware of so much (viruses etc.) that blur our historical distinction between living stuff and non-living stuff. Species? Same thing.
So I think that most all the characteristics you have now, including what we call consciousness, probably slowly came into being in populations over many generations. We would be hard pressed to identify any noticeable differences between any population and their own parents or their own children.
Note that this isnât to say that it isnât all miraculous. I would still call our very existence, much more then life, and much more yet intelligent life all pretty miraculous no matter what long or short history of circumstances God used to bring it all about.
