A serious break in the DNA history.
As you may know from my comments I also believe in the randomness of mutation but that the survial fitness is determined by compliance with the law to love thy neighbour… Can you give me a reference regarding Darwin expressing the guidance to come from Nature - not God?
Are you talking plants and animals here, or just people? How does that relate to a mutant gene that causes cancer in the most wonderful, loving person?
the law applies even to planetary systems as the request to give up part of the individual self for the benefit of the higher level self is maintained throughout any system.
How does it relate to the most loving person getting run over by a bus or getting killed by lunatic or a tsunami? Thinks about that for yourself
What law are you taking about? gravity?
the law to love thy neighbour. like thyself s stated above.
@Gerhard, you use an English spelling for neighbor. Are you English or Canadian?
In The Origin of the Species, Darwin says that natural selection guides and perfects evolutionary change. It is clear that he does not mean God is choosing or he would have said “divine selection” guides evolutionary change. I have the citation as p. 473 of the 2nd edition, Modern Library, which I found on line.
In a recent book The Social Conquest of the Earth, E. O. Wilson says that the social, cooperative nature of most species, including humans, has enabled them to adapt to the earth’s ecology, and I would agree support your thesis. Although Wilson is not a believer he tries to work with believers to support the ecology and prevent the ecological disasters which would devastate nature and humanity. Dawkins and Dennett fiercely condemned Wilson for his deviation from their understanding of Darwinism.
As I have said the evidence for ecological Natural Selection is clear, and the fact that God/Logos is the basis for this. Cooperation or love your neighbor as yourself is not a scientific natural law, but a divine moral law, however your understanding of cooperation is much more intentional that mine. Reality is relational, so relationships do not have to be based on intentionality.
That law applies to planetary systems? Where did you get that?
BioLogos supporters, in general, should have no angst in concurring that Darwin’s theories are not an adequate basis for BioLogos work.
If it had been, BioLogos would not have been necessary …
George
actually German but living in the UK
what do you mean with “intentional”?
Love on the physical reality gravitational energy, in the metaphysical space it is emotional energy. The problem with humans is the ability to manipulate the emotional energy of others in the interest of our personal self thus against the all encompassing God.
I think that we are better off recognizing that Reality is relational, which includes gravity, love, and knowledge.
which does not tell me what you meant by “intentional” guess I am lost in translation
@Gerhard
“The request to give up part of the individual self” sounds like intentional action.
still struggling with your comment. Reading about intentionality on Stanford only confirmed my understanding of the limits of language and did my head in.
Do you propose reality to be intentional or not? If not, does your existence make sense to you or not?
The reality has a meaning and purpose, but it is not intentional for it is not a person or an agent, who can think and intend.
Monad in his Chance and Necessity says that Nature is composed of objects who cannot think which is true in some sense, but that is not the problem. Monad went from that statement to the conclusion that because objects cannot think, they have no purpose and meaning because purpose and meaning requires thinking. Thus all purpose and meaning in the universe comes from humans because they are the only ones who can think.
While the logic is impeccable based on the assumptions, the conclusion is very faulty. Natural laws are per se not rational because the are a product of matter/energy which is not rational. Humans are rational, but they live in an irrational natural environment. Thus life is not rational. What is not explained is: How and why could rational humans be the product of irrational nature or evolution?
Now Monad is very clear that humans can produce meaning through making tools and communication? He says that whatever meaning and purpose in the world is the product of the human imagination. The claim is that all religion is the product of human imagination. Sadly if that were true everything else about human civilization, including science, would be an illusion.
If everything were purely matter/energy, the universe would be irrational period. But everything is not solely matter/energy. Reality, the universe is not only matter/energy. It is also composed of the rational and the spiritual because the universe is rational, rather than composed of being.
Matter cannot think on its own, but humans give meaning and purpose to matter. Now we can make machines that is programmed to think! If humans can give meaning and purpose to matter, to things, then certainly God can give meaning and purpose to the universe. However if God is an impossibility, then we are lost in an irrational universe with no hope for the future.
Thus according their own reasoning human have a choice between a universe without God devoid of meaning, purpose and rationality or a universe with God with all those things and more. It would not seem to be a hard choice to make.
brilliant confusion about Monad and Monod. In German you would say “Freud laesst gruessen” 
As you might have noticed, we humans are not the only ones giving purpose to things based on a cognitive process, e.g. thought, as so also does any animal using tools like the monkeys crushing shells with stones, using sticks to get food or crows using stones to float their food into reach. There is a difference between having a purpose in its existence and in seeing the purpose of an existence. The purpose of an object can only be seen if you can recognise the object. It does not even need mental faculties such as a brain and is exemplified at the most basic level in the nutrients recognised as such by a bacterium.
Considering how long it takes me to work through an article as a referee I won’t have the time to combe through his assay but in the synopsis in Wikipedia it stays
"Monod states that the decisive factor in natural selection is not the “struggle for life” but is the differential rate of reproduction and the only mutations “acceptable” to an organism are those that “do not lessen the coherence of the teleonomic apparatus, but rather, further strengthen it in its already assumed orientation” (Monod, 119). Monod explains that the teleonomic performance is judged through natural selection and this system retains only a very small fraction of mutations that will perfect and enrich the teleonomic apparatus."
and here he shows his incoherence as for nature to “judge” it would need to be not a material object that is not intentional. Why would nature need to judge if it has no purpose?
Thank you for this information.
One thing I would like to do is to revise our concept of teleology. In some sense I might agree with Monod in that things do have a purpose, but not in the way Aristotle said. We need to fix philosophy, not reject it, but of course this is not easy or simple, especially when everyone has taken already made up their mind.
the only way to reject philosophy is to seize thinking. Difficult but apparently possible
It is odd that the logic forces the outcome of the action thus making free will obliterate and the action of the individual merely a random act, but as we are aware of outcome consequences we cannot claim randomness of our actions but have to justify them in the context of our awareness. The latter would require us to follow the underlying principles of the system as we cannot fully comprehend the outcome of our actions. A bit of a raw thinking here but hope to have more time in Feb
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