Good comments, Medicodon. I will add to your premise at the end of this short retort to a few of those who commented on your post:
To Beaglelady, both soft tissue and musculoskeletal systems fail. That has nothing to do with the incredible majesty of their evolution
To Bll_II, gradual change is not in dispute, except for the Cambrian Explosion, where in the blink of an eye, 17 new body forms were added to our existing 4 Phyla ~535 Mya. Few dispute that we have evolved. But the complexities defy that it could happen without intelligence. Note that the smartest minds in the world have yet to duplicate anything approaching the creation of life in vitro.
To T_aquaticus, it is NOT intuition that forces some of us to the obvious conclusion that there was design and purpose involved. It is the science of our current understanding of the 3 billion base-pairs and the statistical impossibility of them mutating to the degree necessary without cell death in the process. There is simply not enough time (only 3B years of our 4B age of earth) to have pulled that feat off.
to michellmackain, I did not read anything that would imply that “chose not to believe something regardless of what the evidence says”. Medicodon is simply saying the opposite…that it is the deniers who are making assumptions, not him.
There is a really simple explanation for the recent observations that many scientists are moving toward a belief system that integrates God into the equation. The HGP has created more unanswerable questions about our evolution than it has provided answers absent divine intervention.
isn’t God cruel to let those cute children die from disease? That he lets old people die from painful disease is okay - isn’t it? Shouldn’t an all loving God love kids more than grown ups?
The logic incoherence is strong in you. Perhaps you should consider that the physical death is not an issue with a god that you can be with for eternity, if you want to, but then - some like it hot because they want to be with their NotGod
What exactly is your point? I was merely pointing out that stuff mentioned doesn’t always work so well. Hearts can have arrhythmias and heart valves can fail to keep blood flowing in one direction.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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For that matter how can we expect these overtaxed minds of ours to understand all we expect of them? Logic and reason only can take us so far. In the realm of values they’re only useful for examining internal consistency.
Except it didn’t happen in the blink of an eye and there are transient forms in the fossil record. While it may have been a blink in geological time it still took a long time on the human time scale.
Yep, by ‘mind’ I don’t just mean logical reasoning. Minds work with values and love and language and all kinds of things that materialists must dismiss as relatively unimportant quirks of a brain.
Well not all but then I probably have lost my materialist credentials by now. Lack of theism no more obliges one to devalue or dismiss all the better parts of our humanity than theism obliges anyone to insist on a young earth.
Sometimes I think I fail to make my points clearly.
For me it is the multiple, complex, functioning organ systems in the human body that is the “clincher”. These all had to evolve more or less together in 3D form and complexity, and in function, in order to arrive where we are now with human anatomy and physiology. This, plus the other topic of abiogenesis, leaves me with no other conclusion than that there was a supernatural intelligence involved. Whether it was instantaneous creation or progressive creation or theistic evolution or evolutionary creation etc etc, I am not sure.
Others may disagree and say that enough time and slow gradual random change etc etc can explain all this, ie., neo Darwinistic evolution. And that is perfectly fine with me. I am simply stating my own beliefs and intuitions.
Who and what are you quoting? A search of that quotation gets nothing. You use quotation marks for when you repeat something which somebody has said or written and not for some paraphrase. One should be able to search the quoted phrase in order to find it. I am just complaining because this made it hard to find.
I see now this is a response to Medicodon when he said “I just don’t buy it” which is a lousy premise for an argument intended to convince someone of something. So I suggested the possibility that he was not making an argument to convince other people of anything.
Abiogenesis IS indeed what all of the evidence tells us. And his reply to that is simply, “I just don’t buy it.” That very much sounds like he is simply choosing not to believe something despite what the evidence says.
I admire your openess and agnostic approach to things in general.
And I also admire your lack of hostility and condescension to others with different beliefs etc. It makes for a more productive conversation in the long run.
You are abosolutely correct that I am not making an argument to convice other people of anything.
I am sharing my own beliefs and intuitions. If you find these to be garbage or worthless, please deposit them in the trash.
“Meaning” is word which plays a role in human language, and that role is to refer to significance of words and statement expressed in such a language. The words and statements are expressed in a variety of material mediums such as sound or bytes in an internet discussion. You might as well suggest that softness cannot exist in matter because there is no atom of softness. It is a descriptor of material things and not itself a material object.
Though I suppose we can add that both meaning and softness are descriptors which are highly relative to the personal experience of human being either in the use of language or in touching things. The meaning of a word or statement is certainly not to be found in a study of sound waves or bytes in themselves, it is something we have learned to attach to them in the process of our perception of them which involves the work of our mind, just as softness involves the work of our brain in the perception of touch.
I remember when I was an undergraduate physics student that someone said his philosophy class said there was no such thing as meaning. My response was that this was a meaningless statement and I would therefore pay no further heed to the claim. But that does not mean I am willing to make the leap into the fantasy world of the Neoplatonist remaking reality according to Plato’s shadows on the wall.
One doesn’t have to be a materialist to think this these are not providing sound reasons for claiming invisible dragons in one garage.
No, I do not read the work of creationists or ID pseudoscience such as what the Discovery Institute concocts. Have you read about the new scientific research done in metabolism first theories and pre-biotic evolution? This work is rapidly leading to a greater understanding of what life is and the denials of those who simply do not want science investigate the origins of life no more than they wanted science to investigate the origins of the species are just creating another flat earth society. It is a waste of human thought.
This is what comes of replacing your faith in God with a faith in arguments for the existence of God. It serves little purpose except when you want to shove your beliefs down the throats of other people. To me it seems that idolatry is a high price to pay for changing religion into a tool of power.
Why is God such a difficult Person to believe exists? Morality, imo. EGO, easing God out. I don’t want someone cramping my style. I don’t like taking orders. I prefer to run the show. I know what I’m doing and what I want and how to get it. God will make me sing in a choir and sprout wings from my back and I’ll fly around and I won’t ever be able to smash that jerk’s face in. Correct? Correct. Must be.
The only problem with that thinking is that it is completely ridiculous, except for smashing his face in.
@Medicodon I am not sure if this will help your discussion, but then again it may. The Eastern Orthodox theology includes the doctrine of the energies of God - my understanding of the Greek terms is akin to energies, dynamics, movements, intelligibility, and phenomena, and a loose ‘scientific’ terminology may be the ‘interface’ with the divine creative will. This doctrine addresses the creation and sustaining of all and derives its meaning from the Gospel, when the disciples witnessed Jesus at mount Tabor conversing with Moses and Elijah.
I guess, a good natured humored response to these discussions may be the doctrine could support both some version of ID and EC; however, seriously, I think in the final analysis both ID and EC outlooks fail as they do not develop a theologically sound concept.
Yes I am familiar with metabolism first theories, the RNA world, etc.
Dr James Tour is a well respected organic chemist at Rice University in Texas.
As a purely objective experment it would be very interesting to compare your H-index with his.
