Posted on 06/06/2013 5:47:54 AM PDT by kimtom
I hope You’ll step in and clarify where I misunderstand- The following is to help me too as I’m thuinking about this (Thanks to aq Youtube Video here which simplified the kolmogorov complexity here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyB13PD-UME )-
Python wqorks liek so:
non Random:
ABABABABABABABABABAB
>> “AB*10” =Description= which is a ompressed shrot description which results in the following string
ABABABABABABABABABAB =String
Random:
ABAAABABABABABABABABAB
>>’AB’+’AA’+’AB*9’ =Description
ABAAABABABABABABABABAB =String
Longer Random Description with same amount of letters as first string:
ABAABBABBAABABABBABA
Since the description woudl be logner than the string, the shortest way to write the string in the python program is to simpyl write it out without a description) It is concidered ‘Irreducibly Complex” at this point
Reader Dave- if you’tre still readign htis- Can you tell me, why Id is misrepresentign Irreducible complexity? You’ve shown us that a String of information can be compressed to the shortest description possible, but you haven’t shown us how nature could produce all the information necessary nor all the parts of of an irreducible system, assemble them quyickly enough so that the system doesn’t just wither away and die while awaitign asswembly- The whole concept of ID’s irreducible complexity states that soemthign like the ‘outboard motor’ in ecoli has parts that are irreducible- and if missing htose parts, the species woudl perish
ID’s Irreducible complexity premise is that any complex organism coudl not possibly survive while awaiting the next crucial irreducibly complex part to be ‘created’ by the long slow process of macro-evolution.
I’m not exactly sure hwat your beef with ID is? Are you insinuating htat, as I said in previous posts, that Nature is capable of ‘creating’ irreducible complexity? You didn’t give an example of how it could, how nature could ‘create’ new information, you just kinda berated ID, showed some algorithmic complexity, and left it at that-
[[Personally I hold the view that neo-Darwinism implies intelligent design (look up the definition of intelligent agent used in modern AI work]]
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to be implying that nature is capable of beign hte ‘intelligent designer’ based on soem algorithmic programs CREATED BY INTELLIGENT DESIGNERS (Not yelling, just stressign hte key words here)- These algorithims have been shown to be anytrhign but random generators, and have been shown to need some strict a priori planning and construction to arrive at soemthign that LOOKS LIKE randomness- Unless I’m mistaken, there’s no program in the present which is fully random which produces irreducibly complex structures? The only programs I’m aware of ARTIFICIALLY seleect which ‘mutations’ to keep in order to arrive at a preselected goal (ie: once the ‘right mutation’ is selected, the program ensures it remains safe whiel it awaits the next ‘right mutation’) And sicne we know NATURAL SELECTION doesn’t select anything and hang otno anythign that is NOT benificial or useful, the program doesn’t actually represent what happens i n the real world
You said [[In the end, the whole “crevo” debate is quite frankly stupid. It is based on two false assumptions shared by literalist six-day creationists,]]
Well since you insinuate the opinions of Literalist Creationists is stupid, one coudl say your biblical deconstructionist opinion is stupid because it ignores God’s word which tells us that death came AFTER the fall of man- It ignores that God Hismelf said this (Soem even goign so far as to claim God’s word is merely the thoughts and words of men as passed down to htem in stories) You claim there is an ‘enlightened way’ to read God’s word, and I’;m assumign htat ‘enlightened way’ means the way which holds hands with evoltuionary beleifs (and which is also an accusation to htose who ‘aren’t enlightened’ that they are ignorant
anyway- looking forward to your reply if you’re still here i nthe thread- Mainly I’d liek you to explain how ID’s use of Iredicible complexity somehow does discredit to kolmogorov’s definition of irreducible complexity, and whether or not nature is capable of producign NEW NON SPECIES SPECIFIC information (which woudl be absolteuly necessary to move a species beyond it’s own KIND)
[[and Cott, you are a blessing!]]
Well, I’m not too sure about that- I sometimes type faster than my brain can formulate or comprehend soemthing- and often misinterpret, (I think I missed the mark on this kolmogorov complexity thing [first I’ve heard of it really]- mainly becasue I think I misiunderstood what Reader David was ifnerring)- but I do try to understand and noodle thigns over and heopfully coem up with at least some partial explanation- I’ve been reading writings on kolmogorov compelxity for days now and the wording used to discuss the concept are real brain busters- hard for a tired mind to grasp at times- (Deski, when he breaks out of civilian speak and into geniuos speak, is quite hard to follow- especially not knowing math and terminology liek he does)
woops, in my secodn string (the ‘NON RANDOM one) in previous post, one of the “AB’s” needs to be removed for it to be the same length strign as first non random string- first strign had 20 letters, secodn random string had 22- it was suppsoed to be 20 letters just liek hte first non random string-
ah poo- no it wasn’t- the third random string was the same as the first non random string- Gettign tired I guess- I should have just used two strings one random, one non random for simplicity sake
bfl
My beef with the versions proposed of ID is that it doesn't produce a falsifiable theory. This is also a beef I have with many versions of Darwinism (both neo- and classical), including all the universally explanatory versions that occur in atheistic polemics. Sir Karl Popper was correct both in his dismissal of Darwinism as a "metaphysical research program" rather than a scientific theory, and in his subtly worded "recantation" of that position: that it could be reformulated as a falsifiable theory [in specific instances]. I feel the same way about ID being a metaphysical research program, and very much wish that its advocates could reformulate it as a falsifiable theory in specific instances, since as I pointed out, I am sympathetic to ID -- such a reformulation needs to begin with a scientific theory of intelligence. There is one on offer in the work of Marcus Hutter (who works on AI and for all I know doesn't care a whit about the "crevo" debate) on maximal intelligent agents, but applying it leads to my position that neo-Darwinism implies intelligent design: it is fairly easy to argue that the biosphere itself, as conceived by the neo-Darwinian synthesis, fits the Hutterian definition of an intelligent agent.
The problem that genetic programming reveals with critiques of Darwinism is that the critiques try to show that the mechanism -- stochastic variation and selection -- can't produce novel complex functional structures (novel in the sense of having functionality no precursor structure had). You are right to note that this is done by showing that in a cleverly designed environment a Darwinian mechanism of stochastic variation and selection produces novel functional structures meeting some criterion (the criterion in nature is producing more approximate copies over a long period of time, or as the Scriptures put it in the case of plants "bring forth seed according to their kinds" -- the criterion in genetic programming might be picking winners on the stock market). Thus, at the level of philosophical debate, genetic algorithms actually support the existence of a intelligent creator, since the only place we know a Darwinian mechanism produces novel complex results is in a cleverly designed context, and provide no aid or comfort at all to atheist polemicists however much they might fancy it does, except in as much as it overthrows any attempt to argue the contrary position on the basis of specific features needing to be directly designed (which is what ID folk seem to want to argue).
The point of my critique of the debate was not that either position in the debate is per se stupid, but that the contradictions between theistic creation and neo-Darwinism both sides harp on are based on false assumptions. (Much though I might wish the Scriptures said "He who says in his heart there is no God is a fool," they don't say that, they say "The fool says in his heart there is no God," so I won't even attribute stupidity to the atheist polemicists, even though they are wrong.)
If one wants to believe on the basis of reading the Scriptures -- ignoring the views of the Fathers of the Church that "It matters not whether you say 'day' or 'aeon' the thought is the same" (St. Basil the Great); that the first two chapters of Genesis are "doctrine in the guise of a narrative" (St. Gregory of Nyssa); or that they cannot be literally true (Blessed Augustine of Hippo); ignoring the fact the Hebrew word Englished as "day" is ambiguous in denotation; ignoring the fact that rabbinic commentators hold that only the first sentence of Genesis actually describes creation -- that the universe is a prepared system about six thousand years old, that the preparation of the system took 144 hours, and that retrodiction by the laws of physics further back than that produces an illusory history, there is nothing stupid per se about that as a philosophical position. It is not, however, a scientific position, as it is not falsifiable: no conceivable experiment or observation could show that the universe is not a prepared system, or show that any details of an account of its preparation are false.
As the main point of this thread is ID, as to your other point on the origin of death, I will not go on at length, but refer you again to Kalomiros's The Six Dawns, who does a much better job of dealing with the matter than I (hardly surprising, he being the best Greek Orthodox lay theologian in recent years).
And no, asserting that something is not science is not pejorative (at least not unless you believe as turn of the 21st century atheist materialists do that science is the only valid means of uncovering truth) but descriptive. I am a hard-core Popperian in my view of science, and regard any unfalsifiable assertion as non-scientific. This is not to say there are not many, many truths which are not scientific.
I make my living as a mathematician, and the theorems of mathematics are not science: they cannot be falsified by any conceivable observation or experiment because fundamentally they are all tautologies. (What is wonderful about mathematics is that there are really non-obvious tautologies that when uncovered can end up being useful, though we mathematicians don't do mathematics because it's useful, but just the fun of finding them). Actually, relevant to this thread, I encourage everyone to read Eugene Wigner's essay "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" -- the fact that there is an uncanny correspondence between what mathematicians discover just chasing the beauty of abstraction and what is needed to describe the material world cannot be explained by the Darwinian paradigm (that is the point of (the atheist?!) Thomas Nagel's recently issued Mind and Cosmos, which I have not read, but which revives in more, and thus actually valid form, C.S. Lewis's critique of materialistic Darwinism) and points to the kinship between the human mind and the Ground-of-Being, which the Scriptures phrased, "Come let Us make Man in our image and likeness."
The knowledge of God attained through prayer by hesychasts is not science, but is more important knowledge than any science wins us about the material world.
I could go on with other non-scientific truths, but you get the idea.
Thanks for this interesting post.
(I had to look up “hesychasm.” Thanks for expanding my vocabulary!)
The phrase “revives in more” should have been “revives in more careful form”
Mea culpa: My thought gets ahead of my fingers at times and I’m a terrible proofreader.
thanks for the reply Dave- I’ll get to this tonight- probably be pretty late- aroudn 1 am or so
but briefly, I’ll just quickly touch on this statemnt [[My beef with the versions proposed of ID is that it doesn’t produce a falsifiable theory.]]
Actually intelligent design is falsifiable- whereas macroevoltuion hypothesis is not- Microevoltuion is another story- it certainly is falsifiable- quite a number of macroevoltuion advocating scientists have proposed scientific arguments aimed at falsifying ID- like behesaysd- one can’t have it both ways- evoltuion advocating scientists claim there is evidence agaisnt ID, but then turn aroudn and cvlaim it is unfalsifiable- that truly is a case of havign your cake and eatign it too-
If you are goign to claim that ID isn’t falsifiable, then you are goign to have to admit hte same for macroevoltuion (again- natural selection is indeed falsifiable and has been proven to be a fact- macroevoltuion on the other hand is a whole diffrerent animal)
As Behe points out correctly (and has been proven by the cosntantly movign goalpoasts that macroevoltuion advocating scientists keep advancing)
“Let’s turn the tables and ask, how could one falsify the claim that, say, the bacterial flagellum was produced by Darwinian processes? (Professor Coyne’s remarks about a Precambrian fossil hominid are irrelevant since I dispute the mechanism of natural selection, not common descent. I would no more expect to find a fossil hominid out of sequence than he would.) If a scientist went into the laboratory and grew a flagellum-less bacterial species under selective pressure for many generations and nothing much happened, would Darwinists be convinced that natural selection is incapable of producing a flagellum? I doubt it. It could always be claimed that the selective pressure wasn’t the right one, or that we started with the wrong bacterial species, and so on.”
http://www.trueorigin.org/behe06.asp
The quote from the article above is a fascinating article as a whole as well which basically states that of course ID is falsifiable- you can establish a ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ conclusion that will show a designer was needed- As Behe points out SETI is a search for evidence of intelligence, and is a falsifiable hypothsis’ that there is itnellgience soemwhere ‘out there’ that is capable of comunicating it’;s intellgience to us in the form of cumincation- they are looking for jkey markers that indicate intellgience which owudkl seperate intelligent comunication, or intelligent noise, from unintelligent background noise- (and as Behe correctly points out again- these governemnt fudned scientists are ‘appealign to design’ despite never havign experienced that design from an alien source personally. Even though there hasn’t been (to ur knowledge) evidence of intelligent alien noise, to say simply that ‘it isn’t science because it hasn’t been proven yet’ isn’t how science works as we’ve seen fro mthe federally funded govenrment program looking for intelligent alien noise-
[[As the main point of this thread is ID, as to your other point on the origin of death, I will not go on at length, but refer you again to Kalomiros’s The Six Dawns, who does a much better job of dealing with the matter than I (hardly surprising, he being the best Greek Orthodox lay theologian in recent years).]]
In a seperate post- please give an outline of his explaination for hte problem of death BEFORE the fall of man- I’m bettign it’s a deconstruction of God’s word to make it fit an a priori beleif that life evovled fro mnon life, but I’ll await your synopsis if you’ll be so kind-
[[I am a hard-core Popperian in my view of science,]]
Then you’ll agree with him that macroevoltuion is not falsifiable?
[[I make my living as a mathematician, and the theorems of mathematics are not science: they cannot be falsified by any conceivable observation or experiment because fundamentally they are all tautologies.]]
Theorums aren’t science?
“Mathematicians seek out patterns[9][10] and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proof.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics
(I knopw, I know, Wiki- but ‘all prime numbers are odd numbers’ is a falsifiable assertion- 2 being the number which falsifies the claim
“Many philosophers believe that mathematics is not experimentally falsifiable, and thus not a science according to the definition of Karl Popper.[55] However, in the 1930s Gödel’s incompleteness theorems convinced many mathematicians[who?] that mathematics cannot be reduced to logic alone, and Karl Popper concluded that “most mathematical theories are, like those of physics and biology, hypothetico-deductive: pure mathematics therefore turns out to be much closer to the natural sciences whose hypotheses are conjectures, than it seemed even recently.”[56] Other thinkers, notably Imre Lakatos, have applied a version of falsificationism to mathematics itself.”
“If I am in a scientific field that relies on mathematics (that’s all of them) and if the mathematics is so badly constructed as to produce incorrect evaluations of my data, then my field will be undermined by the defect in the underlying mathematics, just as though the mathematics was a defective microscope or a misaligned magnet.”
http://www.arachnoid.com/is_math_a_science/feedback.html
Seems to me macroevoltuion hypothesis is fileld with mathematical issues- so if mathematics isn’t sicenc,e then obviously the construct of maceroevoltuion is not science because it relies on an unscientific process of mathematics as one iof it’s instruments which is crusial to the foundation
There appears to be an ubmer of proofs in mathematics- as per the following wiki site again
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_impossibility
You seem to be claiming that super large improbabilities can’t be concvidered impossible because there’;s no way of falsifying whether it is infact completely impossible or not- I’m not sure whether this is true or not- I suspect thsi is simpyl symantics which doesn’t actualyl jive with real life experiences which show that when soemthign is impossible beyond a large improbability number, that it is somethign htat isn’tr goign to happen- (let alone happen trilliosn of times, which woudl be necessary for macroevoltuion throughout the billions of years needed in order forl ife to arise fro mnon life, or even from ‘simple’ life, or even from ‘simpler’ life)
AS metnioned before, Aside from strict falsifiable measures- (as though if soemthign isn’t strictly ‘scientific’ then it can’t be truth’) truths are based on cases presented beyodn reasonable doubts, and htere’s no real reason to rejct a truth based on ovwerwhelming evidences sugfgesting a ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ case for soemthing
I weill look more into ‘falsifiability of mathematical probabilites’ later- it woudl seem to me that it woudl be falsifiable, as when a probability is given for soemthign liek poker- the probability of hitting a straight flush on the deal beign somethign like say ‘1 in 500,000’ (or whatever the probability odds are) that IF the reality is thast peopel always hit a straight flush every 500 hands out of 500,000 deals, then the original probvability odds of 1 in 500,000 has b een falsified- the reality beign that 500 in 500,000 deals results in a straight flush- Real world evidence wouldn’t match the mathematicval probability odds, and hterefore the mathematical probability odds woudl be falsified by real world experience-
Poker players make their livign off of odds- they do so becausde it’s a verfiable fact that the odds are slightly in their favor IF they stick to the odds strictly they can make a livign off of poker-
Note, math is NOT my strong point- took me 3 years to getr throguh PRE algebra- they finally just passed me- I draw an almsot blank when face with math- for osem reason- I think I’m allergic to it-
No, mathematics is not science in the Popperian sense, even though we caucus with the sciences, as it were. Science is an end-user of mathematics, and we sometimes get ideas for abstractions to investigate from the sciences, though since the mid-19th century that has happened far less often than an outsider might think, but the method is completely different — hence the strangeness Wigner found in mathematicians having arrived at the things physics needed before the physicists needed them: as an example, all the mathematics Einstein needed to formulate both special and general relativity had already been done, without any regard for possible physical application, by Minkowski and Riemann. Actually, attempts to force mathematics into the pattern of the sciences have, in my view, done great harm to mathematics.
And yes, mathematics is bigger than formal logic (as Goedel’s incompleteness theorem shows).
Your objection that if mathematics is not science, then a scientific model that depends on mathematics, is not science, however, is completely ill founded: marksmanship depends on metallurgy in the sense that the tools of the rifleman are largely made of metal, but that does not mean marksmanship is metallurgy. And, just as if the metallurgy used in making the rifle, cartridge or bullet is defective, the rifleman may find his tools unreliable, so if the mathematics used in making a scientific model is flawed, there may well be problems with the scientific model’s reliability.
Do not fall into the delusion of “scientism” foisted on the world by atheist polemicists: science is not the only reliable way to discover truth, and much trouble has been caused by people who should know better (like Christians) falling into the trap of accepting the notion that it is.
On the other matter, giving a short version of Kalomiros’s argumentation as it bears on the origin of death, I must demure. I would encourage you to read his essay. Yes, it’s 43 pages long, but it’s an easy read, and actually, the origin of death and Christ’s conquest of death, Christ as the Second Adam are all integral to the reading he gives of Genesis. Doing justice to it won’t shorten it that much, will be a great deal of work for me, and will end up giving you something less worth reading than the original essay.
Actually, more to the point, the fact the rifleman uses the fruits of metallurgy does not mean that metallurgy is marksmanship.
I think you and I have discussed issue before- soem of hwat you’re sayign seems n aweful lot like Deja Vu to me for soem reason, and it seems I had this or a similiar discussion a year or two ago- perhaps I’m wrong, but I suspect not-
At any rate- there’s a few issues o nthe table here- theo ne I’m partcularly interested in is hte kolmogorov complexity, however, before we get there- thsi probability issue needs to be worked out beofre we can tackle kolmogorov because it appears he’s relyign on probabilities as well if I’m not mistaken- so let’s tackle the science one- You claim to be an advocate of Popper- I’m sure you’r no doubt aware of thinkers alogn hte line hwo have rebuttled his positions? And I’m almost certain I discussed this with you a year or two ago- and opointed out some flaws of his- I’ll have to re search what I discovered before, as I’ve forgotten it now- but it seems to me I discovered his strict ‘falsifiability’ requirements in regards to whether or not somethign is scientific was flawed- I’m seeing myself havign typed out that very response to someone here on FR before for osem reason-
But at any rate, I’ll get back to that issue hopefully tomorrow- for now, you said (and do please forgive the horrible typing, I’m flipping all over hte net, fidnign material, reading, thinkign and typing at the same time- my time is limitted- and I do have a neurological issue where letters get scrambled between the brain and figners that makes the4m atter even worse- My errors are far too many to take the limitted time I have to correct them all- so do please bear with me-
I want to address one issue first- you said “And no, asserting that something is not science is not pejorative (at least not unless you believe as turn of the 21st century atheist materialists do that science is the only valid means of uncovering truth) but descriptive”
Well is when You accuse a group who is using science of not usign science- ID precepts of irreducible complexity is infact falsifiable- If an H Pilori bacteria can live without it’s ‘outboard motor’ (which is made up of parts absoltuely essential to it’s function and which can not be removed), then we have just proven that irreducible compelxioty is not a reality- as well, Probabilities are falsifiable- we have just falsified the concept of irredicuble complexity- IF blood clottign can work without one of it’s vital aspects of it’s irreducibly complex system inplace, then the concept of irreducible complexity has been falsified (I beleive it was Miller who tried to concoct a scenario whereby the blood clotting process ‘could have evolved via purely ‘natural processes’ [however, careful examination of his ‘natural processes’ shows that it was anything but nagturasl- it was sueoprnaturally and artificially cotnrolled throughout the scenario to coem to just hte ‘right’ conclusion])
[[Your objection that if mathematics is not science, then a scientific model that depends on mathematics, is not science, however, is completely ill founded:]]
[[marksmanship depends on metallurgy in the sense that the tools of the rifleman are largely made of metal, but that does not mean marksmanship is metallurgy.]]
Not a good analogy- there are many many varieties of metalurgey- soem produce wholly inferior products, soem produce consitantly reliable strong material- soem metals are strogner than others, soem can not withstand stresses- Mathematics has established truths that are consistent by and large and can be relied on to establish cases beyodn a resonable doubt- (such as the probability of DNA belonging to only one person due to the odds beign so large that they could not belong to anyone else-) The claim that probability isn’t falsifiable, I beleive is wrong- let’s suppsoe that after calculating odds for somethign that it is later discovered there was a flaw in the calculations, and so now the old odds are adjusted accordingly, based o n the updated truth, the previous probability odds have been falsified and corrected to conform to the new discovery of the mistake- Shoudl a whole new ‘truth’ be discovered mathematically, then the old probability odds do not jive andm ust be rejected based o nthe new truth, then the old probability odds/calculations have been falsified (good golly this all seems deja vu t o me)
IF however, you are goign to describe an event that supposedly happened billions of years ago in an unknown atmosphere and unknown conditions, then there is no real way of falsifying such events because they can not be duplicated precisely, nor was anyoen there to witness and experience the conditions of the day- nor did they witness anythign macroevolving- Christians are always accused of ‘appelaing to hte unknown’ however, I think much more can be known about our unknown, than can be known abotu macroevoltuion’s unknown- We can at least wintness, test, and falsify whether soemthign is irreducibly complex or not, and we can distinguish the fignerprints of an Intelligent Designer all around us- and strikingly, even secular scientists often agree that there doesw ifnact ‘appear to be’ design (although they ascribe the Intelligent design to nature’s unknown- rather than to God)
[[science is not the only reliable way to discover truth,]]
I never said it was- I am simply responding to your charge that ID proponents are not scientists because they are using ‘unscientific probability’ calculations and because they appeal to irreducibly compelx systems ‘in the wrong manner’ accordign to you- kolmogorov simply described algorithmic irreducible complexity, however, his findings do not really pertain to how life could have arisen from nothing and how new non species psecific information could have arisen to move one species on to another species kind-
[[and much trouble has been caused by people who should know better (like Christians) falling into the trap of accepting the notion that it is.]]
Beleuive me, there is no chance of that with me- the biological, mathematical, chemcial science simply does NOT support macroevoltuion- nor does the fossil record- I do not ely on macroevoltuion science for truth- macroevoltuioon science is an appeal to the unknown, and it tries to fit the evidneces discovered by the science to the faith- My faith lies stricly in the God of htis universe and in His word, and in the fact that death and sin did not enter this world before Adam fell i n the garden- Not all of hte bible is of course to be taken literally, but the creation story is a key central issue that must be taken literally as it is the hwole foundation for salvation theology- to deconstruct it to fit a beleif in millions or billions of years just to accomodate the godless hypothesis of macroevoltuion is to call God a liar- and to destroy the very essence of His creation itself-
[[I would encourage you to read his essay.]]
With all due respect- I’m not really itnerested in reading soemthign thaqt deconstructs God’s word to fit a hypothesis- IF that is the central theme of his essay, then that’s all I wanted to know- if He beleives in a literal six days of creation, in the fall of specially created man, and in the need for a savior- then I’ll give it a read-
Today, being Sunday, I am not of a mind to continue the discussion of the niceties of mathematics and philosophy of science on which most of our discussion turns.
But I will say this, if you insist that St. Basil the Great was wrong in saying “it matters not whether you say ‘day’ or ‘aeon’, the thought is the same”, insist on ignoring the strangeness of the Hebrew usage in which the cardinal, rather than ordinal is used — “one day” rather than “the first day” — then ordinals for the successive days, and won’t read what many Orthodox Christians regard as the best recent commentary on the first chapter of Genesis, reading it very much in light of the parallel the Fathers and the Church’s hymnography have always drawn between Adam and Christ, between the Tree in the Garden and the Tree of the Cross, because it doesn’t uphold your preconception of “a literal six days of creation”, then all I can say, is that it is your loss.
[[But I will say this, if you insist that St. Basil the Great was wrong in saying “it matters not whether you say ‘day’ or ‘aeon’, the thought is the same”, insist on ignoring the strangeness of the Hebrew usage in which the cardinal, rather than ordinal is used — “one day” rather than “the first day” — then ordinals for the successive days, and won’t read what many Orthodox Christians regard as the best recent commentary on the first chapter of Genesis, reading it very much in light of the parallel the Fathers and the Church’s hymnography have always drawn between Adam and Christ, between the Tree in the Garden and the Tree of the Cross, because it doesn’t uphold your preconception of “a literal six days of creation”, then all I can say, is that it is your loss.]]
I asked a simpel question about what the premise of the book was- I also asked whether you had an answer to whether or not htere was sin and death before thwe fall-
And as for ‘my loss’ Hmmm- Seems to me that readign soemthign that contradicts God’s word simpyl b ecause it’s a supposed ‘new enlightenment’ and simpyl because many are swucked into beleivign it despite the FACT that there was NO sin and death before man’s fall and therefore the idea of macroevoltuion CAN NOT jive with scriptures EXCEPT IF we deconstruct God’s word and call Him al iar - well then- I guess I’ll just have to ‘suffer’ the loss-
I’ll ask one more time- Was there, or was there not sin and death before man’s fall? If not- then how do you explain species survivign for millions or billions of years awaiting the right combinations of mutaitons to somehow supernaturally violate natural laws and combine to create NEW NON SPECIES SPECIFIC INFORMATION?
Did or did not man’s sin permeate all of creatioon causign death? Hint romans 8: 20-22 says it did- Again, we have another passage we MUST ignore or explain away in order to reconcile evoltuion and God’s word-
[[“it matters not whether you say ‘day’ or ‘aeon’, the thought is the same”, insist on ignoring the strangeness of the Hebrew usage in which the cardinal, rather than ordinal is used — “one day” rather than “the first day”]]
first you insinuate it matters not which word is used, then all of a sudden it does matter when it coems to supportign an unbiblical hypothesis of macroevoltion?
IF you bothered lookign beyond writings which support your a priori beleif in billions of years- you woudl note that the the term ‘in the beginning’ means “That which was best’ or “That which is first’, and hte Hebrew word for that reflects the Very best of the whole of creation- The first day was the Best- and sets the toen for the rest of the creation week by indicating htat a special events with a very special beginnign was takign place- Hebrew words are VERY specific and relay more informastion than our casual wiords of english do today- When it came to the cardinal of the word Yom- the reason was ocne again to set the tone for the following ordinals to follow- it is the FIRST use of the word Day, and the best becasue it is the beginning with more clarification to follow- meanign hte ordinals
IF you ar serious abotu studying Hebrew- you will find that hte word Echad, usually used as a cardinal, is usually only used as a cardinal to establish the beginning of a set of number,s then is used as ordinals from thereon out when listing hte following ‘items’ (in this case days)- The text begins by stating “ONE DAY” then goes on to describe what ONE DAY means- This is backed up by numerous such examples throughout God’s word in which prefixes are not used, and hten used at the end of the list, or length of time being described- Cardinals OFTEN stand for ordinals when small lists are concerned-
So yeah- We ‘unlightened literalists’ who aren’t privy to soem secret new (or secret old) way of itnerpretign God’s word will just have to live with our ignorance I guess- but at least we don’t have to deconstruct God’s word, and tear down key precepts in order to manipulate hte text to fit an ideology that simply isn’t consistant with the whoel of God’s word-
pinging you to my last comment because I’ve seen this ‘Day’ ‘First’ Argument quite a bit in discussions abotu creation and theistic evoltuion many times, and upon investigation of hte issue- the claims of Day/First don’t hold up for hte reasons I posted above which came from thel ink here:
http://creation.com/the-meaning-of-yom-in-genesis-1
Not sure how to ping the others/multiple folks, but they might be interested too as the claim does crop up quite a bit- and studyign Hebrew shows that htere simpyl is no reason to think that the creation record in God’s word is talking abotu anythign other than 7 literal 24 hour days- regardless of how vehemently soem may try to push the idea- We ‘ignant literalists’ can rest assured that God’s truth stands on it’s own two feet, and that the precision of the Hebrew Language, and repeated patterns throughout God’s word concenring similiar situations/lists etc back up the faqct that God infact did create the world in 6 literal days- and that sin and death did not enter the world until AFTER man sinend i nthe garden at which point ALL of creation groaned under the strain of sin and death-
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