Posted on 09/16/2011 1:37:45 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Professor of Atheism Richard Dawkins grows increasingly shrill. His outbursts include the following, not very recent, but typical:
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It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).
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You can, of course, make any point you like providing you don't care about first premises. One thing which evidently fails to enter Professor Dawkins' mental universe is the idea -- accepted by many scientists -- that the theory of evolution is broadly correct, but as an explanation of life and the human condition it is incomplete.
We know life exists. We also know it had to be created by some process. Biology tells us that that process was evolution. It tells us nothing about what set that process in notion, created the Earth we stand on, or created the universe from some unimaginable pre-Creation state without space or time. The idea that the Universe created itself out of nothing seems somehow unsatisfactory.
Whether the Heaven and the Earth, and human life, was created over 13.2 billion years following the Big Bang, or over six days as a literal reading of Genesis is interpreted as saying, actually does not matter.
Of course I accept evolution. I find the Biblical literalists who claim the Earth was created in six days, and who believe that we are all descended from a couple called Adam and Eve Fell who because they were tempted by a walking, talking snake, tiresome. I am more-or-less aware of the historical reasons why these fundamentalist beliefs took root and persist in some communities.
But this does not mean that evolution explains everything, or that it ought to explain everything.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
stream-of-consciousness sort of way,
Exactly!! Thinking “outside the box”!
No PhD’s allowed!!
These are things that are not easy to talk about in general, ie like talk face to face with your mailman or something. People’s deeply held beliefs often (or usually) put them on the defensive if you ask questions about faith and God.
Somehow as though to even ask a question is casting doubt on God or denying his authority, a kind of modern day heresy maybe.
But I have always been a questioning person by nature. And it is my belief that God himself (would be/is) pleased by us contemplating these things on a deep level and seeing if we can derive things about Him and the universe (his creation).
Ultimately, I cannot and will not be condemned for asking these questions, I feel that it is part of myself and my way of being and my makeup, and the thing that I would be condemned for is if I were to ignore or shun those ideas.
I and think alot of us are on the same page in that regard.
Please forgive the intrusion, metmom, but I must protest that the idea that “the whole of reality” is the physical world we can see and touch represents the Western mindset. This idea is, rather, its very antithesis, as witness Anselm (whom our friend boop has been discussing just recently), Thomas Aquinas, John Milton, and Isaac Newton.
Materialism is not a Western concept. It is a foreign concept. It is the mindset of secularists, who would have us accept the canard that to control us, all they need do is control our backsides.
I was thinking more along the lines of the fact that in many other places in the world, the reality of the unseen, especially the reality of the spiritual world, is recognized.
I do recognize it as a secularist mindset, but our culture and society has become so secularized and *scientific* that the spiritual reality is no longer recognized as legitimate or real.
I am not as up on my philosophers as you folks are.
That is because of the steady march of another religion, Marxism, in this country for the last 100 hers. There is a concerted effort to destroy Christianity and beliefs in the God of the Bible.
I am not as up on my philosophers as you folks are.
Nor I but we are getting an excellent education on these threads from those who are.
Hmmm...
Are trees, paramecia, bacteria, and viruses "alive"?
Perhaps "It seems very clear to me that sentient life and consciousness go hand-in-hand."?
I don't start out by qualifying the basics. Basic principles are, er, basic. Plus I dislike redundancy. Nature seems not to like it very much either.
It is said that Nature (you know, the Nature that God created) is very parsimonious....
Life + consciousness corresponds to ontology + epistemology.
I maintain they go hand-in-hand. You will not find them apart.
The point of the experiments that I have read about is that they support the idea that every living being possesses a form of consciousness, be it basic awareness, sentience, self-awareness, etc., up all the way through to what is the sole possession of the human being, self-consciousness; and from there, reason. (A gift of God that evidently the "lower 'animals'" do not possess.)
This is my trial conclusion, based on observation, knowledge, and experience. FWIW.
Thanks so much for writing, dear brother!
I would agree with BB that ALL life represents some form of “consciousness”, even if it can only be considered the most primitive kind.
Both plants and animals have tropisms (which are Stimulus Response), thus you can give them a sense of “purpose” even though they may not be consciously aware of it.
Viruses, on the other hand, IMHO they do not fall into a category that IMO could be called alive.
I imagined this experiment years ago.
A scientist decides he wants to find out about “life force”, whatever that is.
He puts a mouse in a jar. In a second jar, he puts some crystals of tobacco mosaic virus. TMV is a common virus that can be concentrated and actually crystallized down just like sugar crystals or quartz crystals.
So anyways the scientist gets hit by a bus going to lunch.
A hundred years later, somebody finds his jars and his journal. He decides to finish the experiment. He looks in the jar that contained the mouse. He finds no signs of life and is unsure if there ever was any life there.
By happenstance, he has a tobacco plant in his backpack. He sprinkles some of the crystals on it.
A day later, the leaves start to brown and wither. He concludes that the crystals were alive (even though they had not eaten, taken in any forms of nutrition, they had not reproduced, they had done NOTHING except sit there as chemical crystals for one hundred years!)
Viruses respond in a chemical fashion only. AFAIK, their response is TOTALLY predictable based on our understanding of biochemistry and molecular biology.
LOL! I just "killed" bazillions of virii in my right maxillary sinus by flooding them with hypertonic saline solution. Apparently, at least I stopped them from multiplying...
We differ on the "consciousness" bit; phototropism, for example, merely is a result of externally stimulated growth.
"Conscious" trees? Tolkien fan, are you?
Next, are you going to tell me trees "hurt" when my axe bites in?
Actually, this should has been proved false. Based on dna being discovered. It should be corrected to read. God created vegetation.....
And should be placed just before God created the great creatures...
In other words, soft ware was introduced into the hardware that then existed. The software was in the form of the dna that created all living things. What astounds me is that all living things are made from a dna begining and made in the image of whatever created it.
I’ve been fighting a lingering sinus infection for months now... saline with some baking soda in it works best for me.
And alot of garlic and onions in my food...
“What astounds me is that all living things are made from a dna begining and made in the image of whatever created it.”
God gave us a glimps of DNA in the Biblical account of DNA...a helical staircase ascending into heaven and angels (Messenger RNA) ascending and descending...
And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the LORD stood above it, and said, I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.
(Genesis 28:11-15)
My daughter, a PA, advised me to take benadryl BID prophylactically and use the above. After a lifetime of chronic sinus infections, it is almost like a miracle!
The hypertonic saline is a powerful decongestant (without "rebound") -- you can actually feel it shrinking swollen membranes in realtime. And the osmotic effect destroys most microorganisms. I haven't had a persistent sinus infection in a couple of years. And I don't mind "killing" the "wee beasties" in the least -- "conscious" or not... '-)
LOL! ever see a slug with salt on it? That's my image of microbes, etc in my hypersaline solution! :-)
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My favorite "therapy food" is capsaicin (HOT peppers). My "salsa booster blend": Habanero and Serrano peppers, onion, garlic, cilantro, lime juice -- all fresh. A tsp in a cup of commercial salsa will "light up your life"! ;-)
I don't fault the biblical authors for anything they got wrong in scientific terms, since first, obviously they knew nothing about such matters and second, they got the Big Picture amazingly right.
And that's what matters, imho.
Since I can't confirm your exegesis here from any source I'm familiar with, I'll consider it a matter of your personal opinion, which has nothing to do with science or evolution.
Just mythoughts: "The importance of Genesis 1:2 and allll those other Scriptures that described Genesis 1:2, is to let any one who WILL know there was NOTHING left for evolution to evolve.
Every living thing in 'flesh' was destroyed."
Scientific evidence confirms many episodes of "mass extinctions" including one which wiped out over 90% of life on Earth, and another which, fortunately for humble little mammals, destroyed those big & nasty dinosaurs.
Whether the biblical accounts might refer to any of those known mass extinctions, I couldn't say.
But one thing is certain: no mass extinction destroyed all life, since the evidence shows some species survived & later prospered while others perished.
Then Jeremiah describes the total and complete destruction of the 'first' heaven/earth age. As in NOTHING except the 'souls' survived. Science admits readily they cannot test what they cannot see, but that does not mean it does not exist.
By the way that word 'sottish' means stupid. Now remember I did NOT write these words, they came from the Creator to His children. And sooner or later NOT one soul that has passed through this 'flesh' or age that is NOW will remain sottish. I figure old Darwin has spent the past years very RED faced for his role in 'fostering' an against God religion. Because, you know if I am reading correctly the WORD, then evolution as the story or 'science' describing the existence of what we can find or literally see is a HOAX. AND there will be a time of teaching the unlearned of this age that is NOW, when this 'age' ends. When, this 'man' in flesh bodies age is to end, I have no idea, I figure when the last willing soul is planted in a fertilized egg at conception will be one of the factors that draws this age that is NOW to that end.
Your personal opinions on just how the Bible should be read and understood are very important to you, I'm sure.
But they have nothing -- zero, zip, nada -- to do with scientific validity of observations and theory relating to evolution.
The Bible is not science, and science is not the Bible.
It's a distinction a lot of people can't grasp and, so it appears, you are one of those.
The Heavenly Father is the ultimate perfect 'scientist'... Flesh man just pretends to be creating 'good' science. It this 'flesh' age, is just a temporal phase.
Indeed. One cannot think inside the box and break any new ground....
"Inside the box" is all too often some kind of doctrinaire orthodoxy these days, a closing down of the mind. Thinking stops; the recitation of pre-fabbed thinking takes over. Nonconforming questions are forbidden. We are sunk in irrationality....
Keep questioning. Don't ever let anyone stop you.
It's the most natural thing for a human being to do. And it is the only way that human knowledge of reality can be increased.
I note your opinion regarding the value of science.
I don't agree with it, except in the larger sense that anything man-made is imperfect, including your opinions.
I remember the beginning of the use of the term Outside the Box and its eventually becoming cliched. At first it seemed refreshing and then it morphed into occasional pretentiousness. At first it was, “Hey, that is a neat new way to look at things!” and later, “Yeah, like you are thinking outside the box and no one else is!” or “Yeah, I’m dumb. I can’t see past my nose, but you, Mr. Smarty pants. are a free thinker.” Of course the I and You can be reversed.
However, it did awaken some of us to the idea of considering “other ways” of doing things and, as djf says, it does apply to what we are talking about - that latin thing betty boop said.
Yet, if we can master (a hard thing to do) living in the ever-present-now and being constantly aware of God’s energy and love, we ARE outside the box and don’t have to worry about it. Strange but true - Truth is outside the box.
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