Posted on 04/20/2008 6:09:13 PM PDT by Soliton
Ben Stein was just on Fox News with Geraldo. He was asked If ID versus Evolution was a "left, right thing". He responded,"No, It's an atheist versus a non-believer thing". Stein inadvertantly admitted that ID is a religious argument, not science!
>>I have learned here that not only does evolution have to be false for some people to retain their faith, but sub atomic physics has to allow for radioactive decay time constants to be, well, not constant.<<
Ditto.
It’s ironic, though, that some (not all) who believe in science, and belittle religion for not being based on science, also have to assume some things without proof:
That the universe really exists,
there really are underlying laws and science can discover them,
and science is worth doing.
In my view, these are reasonable assumptions, up to a point, although I am not convinced that humans in their present form can really understand what life is.
Materialists think that life is just a combination of physical particles. I admit that there is some relationship between the forms of life that we currently know of here on earth and physical particles that we currently know of, but that does not exclude the possibility of other forms of life that are not known to us at this time, and does not exclude the possibility that life requires something beyond physical particles to exist.
Suppose that we could only see a touch screen, not the rest of a computer, which was attached to a computer via a wireless connection. Would the materialists claim that, because all they had to do was produce such a screen and power it up, that no computer was needed?
Suppose I and a materialist lived thousands of years ago. I believed in a God and the materialist did not. The materialist discovered that he could plant a wheat seed in the earth and it grew into a wheat plant. The materialist claimed that he now understood what life is, and also that he could create life and food “from scratch.” And life began when the first seed sprouted, end of story, no God needed. While I think that discovery was a tremendous breakthrough and very useful, I think the materialist did not then, nor does he today, deserve to exalt himself by pretending he understands something that he does not.
That’s what I see in the current materialists who see life as nothing more than an arrangement of particles. I can’t prove that there is something else behind life, something I believe to be beyond human understanding (as it exists today at least).
I want science to continue doing what it does, but it should recognize its limitations.
Does evolution have to be false for your beliefs to be true? Or, put another way, if evolution is true is Christianity false?
And to clarify, does your rejection of evolution include a rejection of natural selection, genetics, geology, astrophysics and anthropology or something more narrow and specific?
And finally, if I am going to be skeptical regarding evolution, what should I replace it with to explain our observations in nature?
Would you characterize your position as Theistic Evolution?
My assertion is that anti-semitism and genocide both predate Darwin and Christianity, and that it is nonsense to blame either. However, if you are silly enough to blame one, you are stuck with blaming both.
It seems the vacuous morality (lack of morality) of darwinian naturalism is absolutely consistent with what actually happened in the '30s and early '40s.
We already agreed that such things are as old as human history. You're beating a dead horse.
The Christian world view says, "Thou shalt not murder." The law of tooth and fang stays, "To survive you must murder."
Yet mainstream Christianity's official position on the Jews was anti-semitic for most of its history. I thought we already agreed to that as well.
Let me ask again: It does seem that anti-semitism was entrenched in mainstream Christianity for centuries until fairly recently. When would you date such a change, and which Sects led the way?
I think any honest reader of our conversation would agree that Hitler was ordered not by Judeo-Christian morality but the Darwinian pretext of survival of the fittest...Rex-Lex.
I think any honest reader would conclude Hitler used what he could to justify his acts, including Darwin and Christianity. Like I said, it's a package deal.
Might makes right was the order of the day, but it is not a JudeaoChristian teaching by a long shot.
Maybe not, but you yourself outlined many examples spanning many centuries where their actions were at variance with their words.
Anyone with a perfunctory understanding of the teachings of Christianity can see they are worlds apart.
Anyone with a perfunctory understanding of Darwin knows that it is simply a theory explaining the variety of species. People can and did twist both Darwin and Christianity for their nefarious ends. You simply can't blame one without the other.
"Do you know where the infomation I’m looking for is, or if it exists at all?"
I could. I could also suggest that because you won't go look, it can only mean that you're afraid to find out. I suspect both would be about equally productive.
If it helps any or is in any way relevent to this dicussion, I believe that God started this whle universe of spacetime approx. 15 billion years ago, by our reckoning looking back from our now. I also have a somewhat different perspective on the temporal nature of God's creation. I happen to believe that Jesus, once resurrected, did some serious time traveling to the 'christophanies' recorded in the OT ... as God, and in a new spatiotemporal body, He can go anywhere in Time He choses. The neat thing is, He has told us through the Bible that we too will be in that state for spatiotemporal reality once we are resurrected through Him. There are a number of very interesting clues scattered throughout the Bible regarding the nature of that spatiotemporal reality. I'm writing a book about them in fact.
Not to toss water on this little flame, but when one starts with the premises that God will not lie to us, that God has left us many clues for our intellect to absorb, and that God doesn't answer to us for what we think He ought to be and do, reading the Bible as a true book but we are not yet able to know how it is all true leads one to very different vistas than reading the Bible to find any 'gotchas' the human mind can construct. [Gee, that sure was a long sentence!]
"I could. I could also suggest that because you won't go look, it can only mean that you're afraid to find out. I suspect both would be about equally productive."
If you found what I did, you’re very easily intrigued.
"It has been my observation that those who claim to believe Evolution, apply a dogmatic skepticism to, and refuse to research, any information contradicting their, apparently deeply held belief.""Does evolution have to be false for your beliefs to be true? Or, put another way, if evolution is true is Christianity false?
And to clarify, does your rejection of evolution include a rejection of natural selection, genetics, geology, astrophysics and anthropology or something more narrow and specific?
And finally, if I am going to be skeptical regarding evolution, what should I replace it with to explain our observations in nature?"
Skepticism
1 : The philosophical doctrine that true and absolute knowledge is unattainable
2 : An attitude of doubt, or uncertainty especially about religious matters
Deuteronomy, 7:2 And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them.
Perhaps you should buy a sense of humor
"If you found what I did, you’re very easily intrigued."
That means you knew before this started.
That would be interesting and probably very amusing, since you have not seen the movie and apparently refuse to do so.
I have not seen "Bowling for Columbine" either, but I also do not have the arrogance to criticize it unseen.
Is not natural selection just the demise of the least fit?
My understanding is that selection happens when an organism has fewer offspring than another organism. That might happen, for instance, if an animal dies young but also if it is just less successful in a given environment. Darwin first postulated "natural selection" which was a synthesis of his observations of the natural world and the wide-spread understanding that animals could be engineered by breeding practices. The leap was to postulate that the same process would yield an altogether new species.
But we know a lot more than Darwin did. We know there are several different processes that can change the makeup of a population, including genetic drift, mutation and more. We can see populations of short-lived organisms change before our eyes, like the antibiotic resistant bacteria, sometimes changing into forms not existent before, like a new strain of flu. We know the importance of diversity in a population because that gives it something to change to. We know that sexual reproduction is more successful than mitosis or budding because sexual reproduction yields more diversity. In other words, we know God is pretty darn smart.
The motivation for my question is I think you have allowed atheists, or non Christians at least, to set the terms of the debate and you have accepted those terms. "If evolution is true my religion is false."
Science can make mistakes and have dead ends, especially on the margins. The big bang or worm holes or string theory could be bogus. But your characterization of science you find problematic as dogma is simply false. I'm not a biologist. My degree is in physics. But I know first hand that scientific literature is full of competing hypothesis and attempts to support or disprove all of them. But, after a while, some explanations become widely accepted because they survive every credible challenge while predicting new phenomena.
Saying "God did it" is not considered credible because, by definition, it's not science. That doesn't mean there is no God. Nor does it mean that salvation is not achieved through accepting Jesus. It just means that invoking God is not science anymore than making a movie is science.
If you respond by trying to spar with the tedious work and considered conclusions of thousands upon thousand of scientists over 200 years you are going to lose because the evidence they go by has become gargantuan. If your response to all that is to claim you can PROVE "God did it" then how will you do that?
We cannot even PROVE to the Buddhists they are wrong. Nor have the Amish been able to PROVE to the Roman Catholics they are wrong who can't prove to the Greek Orthodox who can't prove to the Jews who can't prove to the atheists....
My goal is not to convince you that your faith is wrong. Quite the contrary. I believe you have set up a false dichotomy and, in so doing, it is YOU who have jeopardized your faith.
If you believe that your faith is incompatible with evolution, or any other science, you will end up doing more and more complex mental gymnastics to deny the science that becomes all but irrefutable over time. Maybe you'll be lucky and the scientists will discover, on their own, they were all wrong. I wouldn't want to have my faith depend on that.
Your only option, then, will be to deny that reason works to find truth and to call reason a faith-based dogma as you have already called evolution. If that happens you will be marginalized and have no hope of ever convincing anyone who does not already agree with you.
"That means you knew before this started."
How often does leading people to AIG on the pretext of “not spoon feeding” them work?
I think any honest reader would conclude Hitler used what he could to justify his acts, including Darwin and Christianity. Like I said, it's a package deal.
I must say you are the first apologist for Hitler who placed the teachings of Christ as par moral equivalence with that of Hitler who I have run into. You are indeed bold.
"My understanding is that selection happens when an organism has fewer offspring than another organism. That might happen, for instance, if an animal dies young but also if it is just less successful in a given environment. Darwin first postulated "natural selection" which was a synthesis of his observations of the natural world and the wide-spread understanding that animals could be engineered by breeding practices. The leap was to postulate that the same process would yield an altogether new species.
But we know a lot more than Darwin did. We know there are several different processes that can change the makeup of a population, including genetic drift, mutation and more. We can see populations of short-lived organisms change before our eyes, like the antibiotic resistant bacteria, sometimes changing into forms not existent before, like a new strain of flu. We know the importance of diversity in a population because that gives it something to change to. We know that sexual reproduction is more successful than mitosis or budding because sexual reproduction yields more diversity. In other words, we know God is pretty darn smart.
The motivation for my question is I think you have allowed atheists, or non Christians at least, to set the terms of the debate and you have accepted those terms. "If evolution is true my religion is false."
Science can make mistakes and have dead ends, especially on the margins. The big bang or worm holes or string theory could be bogus. But your characterization of science you find problematic as dogma is simply false. I'm not a biologist. My degree is in physics. But I know first hand that scientific literature is full of competing hypothesis and attempts to support or disprove all of them. But, after a while, some explanations become widely accepted because they survive every credible challenge while predicting new phenomena.
Saying "God did it" is not considered credible because, by definition, it's not science. That doesn't mean there is no God. Nor does it mean that salvation is not achieved through accepting Jesus. It just means that invoking God is not science anymore than making a movie is science.
If you respond by trying to spar with the tedious work and considered conclusions of thousands upon thousand of scientists over 200 years you are going to lose because the evidence they go by has become gargantuan. If your response to all that is to claim you can PROVE "God did it" then how will you do that?
We cannot even PROVE to the Buddhists they are wrong. Nor have the Amish been able to PROVE to the Roman Catholics they are wrong who can't prove to the Greek Orthodox who can't prove to the Jews who can't prove to the atheists....
My goal is not to convince you that your faith is wrong. Quite the contrary. I believe you have set up a false dichotomy and, in so doing, it is YOU who have jeopardized your faith.
If you believe that your faith is incompatible with evolution, or any other science, you will end up doing more and more complex mental gymnastics to deny the science that becomes all but irrefutable over time. Maybe you'll be lucky and the scientists will discover, on their own, they were all wrong. I wouldn't want to have my faith depend on that.
Your only option, then, will be to deny that reason works to find truth and to call reason a faith-based dogma as you have already called evolution. If that happens you will be marginalized and have no hope of ever convincing anyone who does not already agree with you."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.