Posted on 09/20/2013 4:29:03 AM PDT by spirited irish
Once again, the definition of the word "science" is: natural explanations for natural processes.
So science itself is uninterested in the philosophical question of: "what is, is" except as that question bears on the scientifically valid question of "what works".
The Bible is unambiguous on the question: God performs many miracles, so why not expect "miracles" in the evolution of life on earth?
The answer is found in the definition of the word "miracle".
A "miracle" is an intervention by G*d intended to help its human witnesses achieve and increase their faith in Him.
So in eras and places where there were no humans, why would G*d ever need to perform a miracle?
Why not just let G*d's original plan play itself out, as intended?
After all, how could G*d be in such a hurry that He didn't have time for His natural processes to work?
2014 & 2016 may be quite different.
Voting DIED Nov 6th 2012.... it DIED.....
The democrats PROVED they have TOTAL control of the voting system..
NOT everywhere BUT in most places..
They overplayed their hand... i.e. Rampant voter fraud..
IT WILL NOT HAPPEN (like that) again........
They will tweeak their system so it’s NOT as obvious NEXT TIME....
STUFFING the ballot has been updated modernized re-thunk...
And people like YOU refuse to KNOW about it...
IT’S Obvious BUT you(and others) REFUSE TO KNOW..
AND “THEY” KNOW IT.. it’s been going on for years BUT it has been PERFECTED...
The ONLY republicans that will win is the republicans that are SUPPOSED to win..
It’s true Gingrich is a progressive and Santorum and Romney are Union stooges.. BUT the ballot is DEAD... and has been for decades.. at least two... maybe 3 or 4.. to some extent..
Lady Liberty is a whore and Uncle Sam is a pedophile..
AND your children are brain washed in public schools..
Sam has his hands in your childrens POCKETS..
2014 & 2016 may be quite different.
Voting DIED Nov 6th 2012.... it DIED.....
The democrats PROVED they have TOTAL control of the voting system..
NOT everywhere BUT in most places..
They overplayed their hand... i.e. Rampant voter fraud..
IT WILL NOT HAPPEN (like that) again........
They will tweeak their system so it’s NOT as obvious NEXT TIME....
STUFFING the ballot has been updated modernized re-thunk...
And people like YOU refuse to KNOW about it...
IT’S Obvious BUT you(and others) REFUSE TO KNOW..
AND “THEY” KNOW IT.. it’s been going on for years BUT it has been PERFECTED...
The ONLY republicans that will win is the republicans that are SUPPOSED to win..
It’s true Gingrich is a progressive and Santorum and Romney are Union stooges.. BUT the ballot is DEAD... and has been for decades.. at least two... maybe 3 or 4.. to some extent..
Lady Liberty is a whore and Uncle Sam is a pedophile..
AND your children are brain washed in public schools..
Sam has his hands in your childrens POCKETS..
Other than my hatred of convoluted, twisted, disconnected from reality ‘reasoning,’ my ‘feelings’ were not ‘hurt.’ Hurt feelings are for adolescents, especially the adolescents in adult bodies so prevalent today.
BroJoeK: “Aquinas (†1274) clearly recognized the difference between theology based on the Bible, and natural-philosophy (aka “science”) derived from our senses.
Aquinas did not expect they would conflict, but ever since his time, example after example has arisen where they seem to.”
Spirited: Natural philosophy is derived from senses?!?!? Heaven deliver us from such patent foolishness! This assumption is entirely ignorant. Senses without spirit (mind) is madness. It is the realm of genetically-preprogrammed animals. Most have souls but not spirits, the seat of intellect, conscience, will. While souls are fully embedded within material bodies, spirits are not embedded within grey matter but open to the unseen dimension, the realm of God, angels and fallen angels.....which is precisely why ideas have consequences.
Like Augustine, Aquinas was an intellectual of the highest order and if alive today would be astonished at how ignorant, naïve and superstitious moderns have become. But then both men would see our obviously intellectually and morally impoverished age as further evidence of the fall.
BroJoeK: “What we are defending is science itself, against the assaults of anti-science anti-evolutionists.”
Spirited: From the post-flood age of Noah and his sons right up to our own, superstitious men have believed they would ‘evolve’ into gods. In Book I of the Gilgamesh Epic,
Gilgamesh boasts that he brought the ‘knowledge of everything’ with him from the highly advanced world that existed before the Flood. What knowledge did he bring? Of God, man’s origins, the Flood, science, evolution, symbols (precursor to the alphabet), agriculture, architecture and much more.
He also boasts of being 2 parts god, only one part man. Of course he believed he was evolving into god. Here we have the germ of what modern evolutionists call macroevolution, meaning one kind, man, transforming into another kind, god.
Many antiquarians believe that Gilgamesh and Nimrod (Amraphel in Genesis) were one and the same man. Nimrod means rebel, and this particular rebel against the Holy God Almighty was the son of Ham. Ham was worshipped by Greeks and Romans as Chronus I, his brother Mizraim as Chronus II. Mizraim’s sons were worshipped as Sun Gods. One of the sons was a man later worshipped as Hermes Trismegistus, the father of “science” and Mystery Religions whose magic formula, “as above, so below” is famous all around the world.
In a previous post you repeated a vastly popular folk myth when you spoke of our “pre-civilized hunter gatherer” past. This folk tale is an inversion of reality. Even pagan historians knew that a “Golden Age” (antediluvian world) preceded the world’s fall into successively degraded ages interspersed here and there by all too brief upticks.
If you are interested in cleansing your mind of folk tales, belief in evolution and inverted history, get hold of a copy of Samuel Shuckford’s “The Sacred and Profane History of the World Connected” (1808).
Jeepers, did we watch the same video, dear BroJoeK? I agree that Lewis accepts the idea that "evolution cannot have been truly 'random'"; also that he did not deny the idea of evolution in principle.
But I do not get the sense that he embraced the idea of common descent on the basis of what was presented in this splendid video: Thank you ever so much for the link, BroJoeK!
Rather, I thought this video was in large part a devastating critique of the epistemological basis on which Darwin's theory rests — epistemology being the "science" of knowledge itself — of what we know, how we know it, and how we validate it.
I took some notes:
C. S. Lewis is quoted as saying, "Darwin and Spencer themselves stand on a foundation of sand, of gigantic assumptions and irreconcilable contradictions." It is said he "dismissed evolution as a myth." But here I think he must mean Darwinian evolution. For it seems Lewis had no difficulty with the idea of evolution as a process "guided by a mind."
One gathers from this video that the main sticking point for Lewis is that he cannot conceive of a purely material process proceeding "blindly" or "accidentally," without purpose or goal, that could ever explain or account for the evolution of man, who uniquely possesses reason and conscience — which, by the way, material nature does not.
To put it another way: As Eric Voegelin once noted, "a universe containing intelligent beings cannot have had less than an intelligent cause."
Then we get into the real meat of Lewis' objections to Darwin's theory on epistemological grounds.
In effect, it seems Lewis characterizes the ToE as premised in an epistemically prior commitment which is tantamount to a dogmatic statement about the nature of biological reality: Reality is through-goingly material and purposeless, thus whatever happens in it occurs by accident. And yet, by a brilliant (yet still quite mysterious) succession of accidents, we arrive at the "descent of man."
Lewis will have none of this. He is depicted as being deeply troubled by the "fanatical and twisted attitudes" of Darwin's dogmatic defenders. He charges them with dealing in "supposals," not facts. He says that science is much more than the discovery of new facts. He suggests that it is possible and desirable for science to look at the accumulated body of facts and seek a newer, better explanation of the facts already on hand, as warranted by new understandings.
At the same time, Lewis notes that "an existing scientific paradigm or model limits you, blinds you in the asking of questions." That Darwin's theory of evolution in particular "restricts what kinds of questions you can ask about nature."
Indeed. That is my very frustration with the theory: It seemingly prohibits all questioning outside of an acceptable, severely limited domain where everybody already agrees with everybody else. Absolutely hermetically sealed minds here!
Must close. Did you and I both "agree" about the depiction of C. S. Lewis and his stance on Darwin's theory and of materialist science more generally, as we viewed in this wonderful video? You did say, "I agree with almost everything reported about Lewis' outlook."
But can you agree with what I wrote above?
What I find strange is it seems you agree with Lewis about his objection to "randomness." But jeepers, dear BroJoeK, that's one-half of Darwin's entire theory, right there.
How does this "compute?"
But what if the relevant causes are not "natural" causes?
Your statement utterly rejects this possibility, dismisses it out of hand.
So we shouldn't even "go look and see whether this may not be the case."
Am I getting this right, dear BroJoeK?
Sigh. Sometimes I think Neo-Darwinists are basically just in the "censorship of Nature" business....
As to God not in a hurry, well fifteen billion years is but a sixth or seventh day in His perspective, though a mighty long time to us who live in this fleshly vehicle for less than 100 years ... 100 years being less than blink in 14.5 billion (you can sum the zeroes if you wish). Which of course points to the not so subtle realization that our concept of Dimension time is rather primitive, to this stage in our learning of the Universe in which we find meaning.
Sadly, you may be right. The Cathedral’s mask is slipping and it is demonstrating its power in more arrogant ways.
“Lady Liberty is a whore and Uncle Sam is a pedophile..
AND your children are brain washed in public schools..Sam has his hands in your childrens POCKETS..”
Spirited: So very true. America’s ‘ruling class’ has been consolidating it’s total control for eighty years and has now achieved near total control as you pointed out.
As Angelo Codevilla reveals in his essay “America’s Ruling Class,” published in part by the American Spectator
( http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the/print ) the ruling class is behind everything that has been going wrong here for many long years....including the imposition of Darwinism.
There is no Darwinism except in the rhetoric of clerics intent on increasing the take in collection plates
That's much stronger language than I would ever agree with, because our country is still full of good people, by any definition.
The fact remains that no serious conservative ran for president in 2012, and today there appear to be more than one willing to lead the charge against ever growing Big Government.
So I am hopeful, as always...
That’s much stronger language than I would ever agree with, because our country is still full of good people, by any definition.
So what?.... Changing the subject merely makes you appear to be a RINO...
WAIT?... are you a RINO.?.
There are no good democrats.. to be a democrat is to be a traitor... but an honest traitor..
To be a RINO is to be a traitor but a dishonest traitor..
many republicans are RINOs and not a few democrats..
You have more brass than a marching band (exceeded only by your presumptuousness).
I don’t know who you think you’re kidding, but it is not anyone on this thread with whom you are currently corresponding. Everyone is on to your game. You are seizing the ideas expressed by others, claiming them as your own, and then, in turn, presuming to instruct them on their own ideas as though their thoughts are your property. Much like the claim jumpers of yore, you propose to occupy someone’s property without authority and claim it for your own. Only this time it is intellectual property that you are expropriating. You are, in other words, a concept squatter - an intellectual claim jumper.
Typical of a two-bit politician, you also seem to think getting out in front of the parade deceives everyone into believing you are leading it.
“the term "vicious predatory animal" is a modern pejorative used in reference to our worst criminals -- murderers, rapists, etc.”
In fact you addressed the issue in a specific context (“No, (to the question if Man is a “vicious predatory animal”) far from it, except certain criminal mind-sets.”) Again, aside from your exception, how do “other similar words,” such as “effective hunter-gatherers” equate with “vicious predatory animal”?
“In fact, four years (February 2009) is the only reference you gave for those 27 alleged “insults” against Christians.”
Again. In post #200m this thread, you allege no new quotes since February of 2009, How Much Longer Dan They Sell Darwinism? FR, and you set the standard for “new quotes” to be four year’s (or less). Prove what you allege.
Sorry, but you are simply over-reacting to my efforts at being brief.
The simple Thomistic distinction here is between Theology based on the Bible and natural-philosophy (aka "science") which begins with inputs from our senses.
Here is a brief summary:
A quick search did not produce a pithy quote from Aquinas on the subject, but here is one in which the idea is expressed:
spirited irish: "From the post-flood age of Noah and his sons right up to our own, superstitious men have believed they would ‘evolve’ into gods...Gilgamesh boasts that he brought the ‘knowledge of everything’ with him from the highly advanced world that existed before the Flood..."
Nobody on these threads has defended Gilgamesh, nor has anyone suggested "evolving into gods".
Those are phantasms of your own imagination, FRiend.
spirited irish: "He also boasts of being 2 parts god, only one part man.
Of course he believed he was evolving into god.
Here we have the germ of what modern evolutionists call macroevolution, meaning one kind, man, transforming into another kind, god."
Sorry, but that's too much of a stretch in imagination, even for a Disney cartoon.
No scientist has suggested "transforming into another kind, god."
So your accusations are not only false but ludicrous.
Why do you keep making them, FRiend?
spirited irish: "Many antiquarians believe that Gilgamesh and Nimrod (Amraphel in Genesis) were one and the same man."
In fact, Amraphel king of Shinar, is mentioned only twice, in Genesis 14, in connection to two battles, and neither time with enough detail to provide indication of his character, or relationship to other non-biblical figures.
So I would give no weight to speculations such as yours here.
spirited irish: "In a previous post you repeated a vastly popular folk myth when you spoke of our “pre-civilized hunter gatherer” past.
This folk tale is an inversion of reality.
Even pagan historians knew that a “Golden Age” (antediluvian world) preceded the world’s fall into successively degraded ages interspersed here and there by all too brief upticks."
Sorry, but the fact is that even today, there are still a few small groups of "uncivilized" hunter-gatherers living as their ancestors did, in very remote locations.
And, as recently as a few centuries ago, vast areas of the earth were populated only by such people -- Native Americans, for example.
As for an ante-diluvian "Golden Age", there is some evidence of civilization under the Black Sea, but all ancient evidence shows that most of mankind lived as primitive hunter-gatherers for thousands of years before the Age of Agriculture.
Indeed, for whatever my opinion on this might be worth: it is the arrival of agriculture and civilization that the Garden of Eden story reports and explains.
spirited irish: "If you are interested in cleansing your mind of folk tales, belief in evolution and inverted history..."
I do enjoy ancient folk tales and mythology, because of what they tell us about our ancestors, but I don't take them any more seriously than, say, some Disney cartoon.
But evolution is a confirmed scientific theory, while the recorded and discovered history of mankind does in fact show increasingly complex technology and civilizations, separated by periods of downfall and Dark Ages.
I have argued here from the beginning that the word "science", properly defined, has nothing to do with epistemology, ontology, metaphysics or even philosophy.
Science is simply a methodology for producing natural explanations for natural processes, period.
So the epistemological basis for science is simply: what works.
Science itself doesn't know and doesn't care about philosophical or theological issues it may stir up.
Of course, if Lewis simply said he didn't think the evidence supported Darwin's conclusions, that is science-talk, and a list of Lewis' objections could then be analyzed for its accuracy and relevance (no such list was mentioned in the video).
And we should note that since Lewis wrote, a lot of new data has been discovered which addresses many old objections.
For one example, DNA analysis strongly supports the idea of common descent.
betty boop: "C. S. Lewis is quoted as saying, 'Darwin and Spencer themselves stand on a foundation of sand, of gigantic assumptions and irreconcilable contradictions.' "
But again, since no specifics were mentioned, we can't address Lewis' concerns.
I'll stress again that there is much, much more data on evolution available today than in Lewis' time.
betty boop: "...it seems Lewis had no difficulty with the idea of evolution as a process "guided by a mind."
Precisely the point I've tried to make through all these posts.
But I'd also point out that it's irrelevant whether G*d intervenes on a moment-by-moment basis to "guide" nature, or whether nature simply unfolds (like a computer program) according to G*d's original instructions.
Indeed, my opinion is that nature itself probably simply unfolds per plan, while anything related to the human soul is a matter of G*d's great personal interest.
betty boop: "Lewis will have none of this.
He is depicted as being deeply troubled by the "fanatical and twisted attitudes" of Darwin's dogmatic defenders.
He charges them with dealing in "supposals," not facts.
He says that science is much more than the discovery of new facts."
All this presented breathlessly, as if it were some devastating rebuttal of science in general, and evolution in specifics.
But what Lewis calls "supposals" are nothing more than scientific hypotheses and theories.
These two words simply mean: explanations, the former being educated guesses based on available data, and the latter being confirmed explanations based on passing tests intended to falsify them.
And that's all science itself can ever do.
So if you wish to have epistemological or ontological or metaphysical certainty about evolution (or anything else), you'll just never find those in science.
For those, you have to look elsewhere -- to philosophy or to your religious faith.
betty boop: "He suggests that it is possible and desirable for science to look at the accumulated body of facts and seek a newer, better explanation of the facts already on hand, as warranted by new understandings."
Sure, that's just what science is supposed to do, every day.
But how often does mankind produce another scientific Newton or Einstein -- once a century?
New paradigms do not arrive every day, and in recent decades huge, huge new discoveries have all gone toward confirming basic evolution theory.
So there is not today a large and increasing volume of data falling outside the expectations of evolution.
betty boop: "Lewis notes that "an existing scientific paradigm or model limits you, blinds you in the asking of questions."
That Darwin's theory of evolution in particular "restricts what kinds of questions you can ask about nature."
And yet there were no specific examples offered by Lewis himself.
Those examples which were offered (i.e., "junk DNA" and tonsils), were certainly not depressed by "Darwinianism", but rather simply by a lack of knowledge.
Once new data falsified previous theories, new hypotheses were quickly developed to account for it.
That's exactly the way science is supposed to work.
betty boop: "Indeed. That is my very frustration with the theory: It seemingly prohibits all questioning outside of an acceptable, severely limited domain where everybody already agrees with everybody else.
Absolutely hermetically sealed minds here!"
In fact, there is no prohibition -- zero, zip, nada -- on asking serious scientific questions about evolution, or on doing the hard physical research (digging fossils, analyzing DNA, etc.) required to expand our understandings.
But if you insist on asking non-scientific questions (i.e., "does G*d exist?"), then those you will have to answer yourself, without much help from science.
betty boop: "What I find strange is it seems you agree with Lewis about his objection to "randomness."
But jeepers, dear BroJoeK, that's one-half of Darwin's entire theory, right there.
How does this "compute?" "
I'll say it again: the word "randomness" is simply science-speak for, "we don't understand it, maybe it's G*d's plan, but G*d is not science, so we say 'random' instead."
The truth is that video never did correctly define evolution theory, which is simply our descent with modifications from common ancestors based on the actions of natural selection.
If you simply add the word "G*d's" in front of "modifications" and "natural", then it seems to me that all of CS Lewis' concerns will be addressed.
Here you impute to me a question I did not ask. Not "insistently." Not at all.
What on earth is going on here?
A baseless, reckless accusation which you make without any knowledge of what you're saying, and why?
So you can change the subject?
What, already you're tired of talking about how Conservatives might win in 2014 & 2016, so now you want to change the subject to whether your dear FRiend, BJK, has ever voted for a non-conservative running in a primary, or a non-Republican in a general election?
My answer is: no. What's yours, FRiend?
“The simple Thomistic distinction here is between Theology based on the Bible and natural-philosophy (aka “science”) which begins with inputs from our senses.”
Spirited: An ideologue is a person who swallows-whole twisted, distorted systems-thinking that is inherently illogical. With respect to your own “swallowed-whole” notions, you must on one hand use your mind (spirit) to posit an entirely insane notion that denies “mind.”
Ideologues always suffer from cognitive dissonance, which means they hold in their minds two distinctly antithetical ideas. In your case, one idea says, “you have a mind,” while the other denies “mind” in service to madness.
It has long been said that the eyes (senses) are the door to the soul/spirit (mind). Any truly great artist will tell you that eyes (senses) and inspiration (mind) work instantaneously together, united in harmony, not one thing followed finally by the other. There is never an instant where eyes (senses) work alone.
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