The eyeball as testimony to evolution?

[paleomalacologist (David Campbell)]

To be more precise, an omnipotent deity could choose to create using a method producing nested hierarchies, such as by an evolutionary process. A deity creating using a more intervention-style approach, as championed by much of ID and YEC, would not be expected to produce the nested hierarchies.

[marvin (Christian Sceptic)]

empty phrase as it is a category error. Faith is based on reason. Reason can exist without faith, but faith can not exist without reason.

[paleomalacologist (David Campbell)]

Reason depends on faith as well. In reasoning, you are trusting in the reliability of the standards you use for deciding what is reasonable. They are mutually interdependent.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@marvin

Reason can exist without faith…

Don’t you have to have faith in your reasoning? You presume, by faith, that it is valid. Maybe that reasoning seems to work is just an illusion. (Try and prove that reason is reasonable, or, using logic, that logic is legit. )

[T_aquaticus]

@marvin

you do believe in the absence of a deity because you believe you would do a better job of creation.

Nowhere did I say that.

What I am talking about is what we would expect to see if God did not use evolution. If God used evolution in the same way that all the rest of nature operates then I would expect to see a nested hierarchy.

[marvin (Christian Sceptic)]

isn’t logic like math axiomatic, e.g. based on agreed definitions?

[marvin (Christian Sceptic)]

@T_aquaticus

Even humans regularly and easily violate a nested hierarchy when they design genomes and organisms, such as fluorescent mice that carry an exact copy of a jellyfish gene.

we violate a lot of things and we do not know if it is good. To violate the law does not qualify for being powerful, nor for being all knowing because it tends to remove one from the gene pool.

why would an all powerful deity need to not reuse a single design, and if he had to, why would he need to not limit it to a nested hierarchy and why would he do things that I can not see the reason for if he is all knowing? He may be all knowing, but shouldn’t I know better

[T_aquaticus]

@marvin

isn’t logic like math axiomatic, e.g. based on agreed definitions?

Logic is based on agreed upon rules and premises. The idea is that if we both agree that the premises and rules of logic are true then the conclusion is valid.

[T_aquaticus]

@marvin

we violate a lot of things and we do not know if it is good. To violate the law does not qualify for being powerful, nor for being all knowing because it tends to remove one from the gene pool.

Then bacteria must all be bad because they participate in swapping DNA between species all of the time.

@marvin

why would an all powerful deity need to not reuse a single design, and if he had to, why would he need to not limit it to a nested hierarchy and why would he do things that I can not see the reason for if he is all knowing? He may be all knowing, but shouldn’t I know better

Your position is that God, for some unknown reason, created life so that it exactly mimics what we would expect from evolution. It’s like saying we should throw out all forensic evidence at a crime scene because God could have planted all of the DNA and fingerprints. You are calling for the abandonment of all logic and reason.

For, be it observed, the exception in limine to the evidence which we are about to consider, does not question that natural selection may not be able to do all that Mr. Darwin ascribes to it: it merely objects to his interpretation of the facts, because it maintains that these facts might equally well be ascribed to intelligent design. And so undoubtedly they might, if we were all childish enough to rush into a supernatural explanation whenever a natural explanation is found sufficient to account for the facts. Once admit the glaringly illogical principle that we may assume the operation of higher causes where the operation of lower ones is sufficient to explain the observed phenomena, and all our science and all our philosophy are scattered to the winds. For the law of logic which Sir William Hamilton called the law of parsimony—or the law which forbids us to assume the operation of higher causes when lower ones are found sufficient to explain the observed effects—this law constitutes the only logical barrier between science and superstition. For it is manifest that it is always possible to give a hypothetical explanation of any phenomenon whatever, by referring it immediately to the intelligence of some supernatural agent; so that the only difference between the logic of science and the logic of superstition consists in science recognising a validity in the law of parsimony which superstition disregards. Therefore I have no hesitation in saying that this way of looking at the evidence in favour of natural selection is not a scientific or a reasonable way of looking at it, but a purely superstitious way.

. . .

Now, since the days of Linnæus this principle has been carefully followed, and it is by its aid that the tree-like system of classification has been established. No one, even long before Darwin’s days, ever dreamed of doubting that this system is in reality, what it always has been in name, a natural system. What, then, is the inference we are to draw from it? An evolutionist answers, that it is just such a system as his theory of descent would lead him to expect as a natural system. For this tree-like system is as clear an expression as anything could be of the fact that all species are bound together by the ties of genetic relationship. If all species were separately created, it is almost incredible that we should everywhere observe this progressive shading off of characters common to larger groups, into more and more specialized characters distinctive only of smaller and smaller groups. At any rate, to say the least, the law of parsimony forbids us to ascribe such effects to a supernatural cause, acting in so whimsical a manner, when the effects are precisely what we should expect to follow from the action of a highly probable natural cause.

–George Romanes, “The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution”, 1882
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution, by George J. Romanes, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S.

[marvin (Christian Sceptic)]

@T_aquaticus

Your position is that God, for some unknown reason, created life so that it exactly mimics what we would expect from evolution. It’s like saying we should throw out all forensic evidence at a crime scene because God could have planted all of the DNA and fingerprints. You are calling for the abandonment of all logic and reason.

Your position is that God for some unknown reason could not create the process of evolution. Its like saying that if he would have created evolution he would be an idiot because look at the outcome - it produces idiots An all powerful God would not create a process that comes up with something as stupid as humans.

It’s like looking at evolution as a crime because it resulted in something like yourself. You are calling for the abandonment of all logic and reason

[marvin (Christian Sceptic)]

@T_aquaticus

George Romanes: “If all species were separately created, it is almost incredible that we should everywhere observe this progressive shading off of characters common to larger groups, into more and more specialized characters distinctive only of smaller and smaller groups.”

There were - and still are - people so illiterate that they read the bible as telling them God is a bit like Yoda sitting by the riverbed making mud pie humans - and all the other species from scratch. Now it’s adequate to think like that if you are a child or haven’t made any intellectual progress, but if you have gone to university such thinking is a declaration of intellectual bankruptcy.

To fail to recognise that a law is a supernatural, e.g. metaphysical element is really embarrassing as a law is by definition not physical. It rules over the physical, thus is by definition supernatural. The problem for a human is to accept to be subject to the law - and always has been since Adam and Eve.

[T_aquaticus]

@marvin

Your position is that God for some unknown reason could not create the process of evolution.

That is not my position. God could have very well created through evolution just as God brings rain through natural causes. Would you agree that evolution is just as natural as rainfall?

https://biologos.org/articles/atheistic-meteorology-or-divine-rain/

What I am saying is that parsimony favors evolution over separate creation and nearly all forms of intelligent design. When you have a known natural process capable of producing the observations you don’t throw it out in favor of a supernatural cause that exactly mimics the natural one. Again, I am talking about immediate causes.

To avoid misapprehension, however, I may here add that while Mr. Darwin’s theory is thus in plain and direct contradiction to the theory of design, or system of teleology, as presented by the school of writers which I have named, I hold that Mr. Darwin’s theory has no point of logical contact with the theory of design in the larger sense, that behind all secondary causes of a physical kind, there is a primary cause of a mental kind. Therefore throughout this essay I refer to design in the sense understood by the narrower forms of teleology, or as an immediate cause of the observed phenomena. Whether or not there is an ultimate cause of a psychical kind pervading all nature, a causa causarum which is the final raison d’être of the cosmos, this is another question which, as I have said, I take to present no point of logical contact with Mr. Darwin’s theory, or, I may add, with any of the methods and results of natural science.
–George Romanes, “The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution”, 1882
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution, by George J. Romanes, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S.

[T_aquaticus]

@marvin

To fail to recognise that a law is a supernatural, e.g. metaphysical element is really embarrassing as a law is by definition not physical.

They are called physical laws for a reason.

@marvin

It rules over the physical, thus is by definition supernatural.

No. Physical laws are the physical. Laws are just how we humans formalize our descriptions of how nature works.

[marvin (Christian Sceptic)]

Th laws of physics are not physical laws as a law is not a physical, e.g. material element. It describes how the materials behave but that does not make them material. This is why the physical analysis of a sentence will never reveal it’s meaning.

Thanks for the explanation of Romanes.
The interesting thing in that context is, that with our psychical abilities we can generate immediate causality by interacting with the primary cause. To what extend this is possible for other life forms we do not know.

[Randy]

@marvin

. This is why the physical analysis of a sentence will never reveal it’s meaning.

I’m not understanding. Are you saying that “meaning” is spiritual? Thanks.

[marvin (Christian Sceptic)]

@Randy

I’m not understanding. Are you saying that “meaning” is spiritual? Thanks.

what makes you think so

[Randy]

@marvin

Th laws of physics are not physical laws as a law is not a physical, e.g. material element. It describes how the materials behave but that does not make them material. This is why the physical analysis of a sentence will never reveal it’s meaning.

Maybe I misunderstood. I thought that this implied the analysis had a spiritual element. I am never sure where physical things would end. Sorry. I think I must have. It is not important. Thanks for the discourse.

[marvin (Christian Sceptic)]

I thought you were enjoyed my smiliy

Is information a material element or an immaterial element? Its a bit along Lennox’s argument from semiotics, but in the end logic is metaphysics

[Randy]

Thanks. I found the video entertaining! But he gave no proof. A mathematician and a biochemist–would they not benefit from talking to a neuroscientist or psychiatrist? Same for a philosopher.

Don’t you think the laws of physics are observations in respect to integration with a view to potential? Yet, our chemical processes by which we make observations are easily disrupted by using the wrong chemicals.

I am a Christian by faith, so we wind up the same. However, I am playing a bit of devil’s advocate. Thanks

[T_aquaticus]

@marvin

Th laws of physics are not physical laws as a law is not a physical, e.g. material element. It describes how the materials behave but that does not make them material. This is why the physical analysis of a sentence will never reveal it’s meaning.

All I am saying is that there are serious problems with the “Physical laws need a law maker” argument. It conflates two very different definitions of the word “law”.