Posted on 10/04/2005 12:21:01 PM PDT by Junior
Been on vacation to Utah.
Yeah; there's Mormons out there!
'Cause it isn't much of a stretch to call the whole thing a 'man written book'.
It appears to me that you can do nothing but put words into people's mouths. :\
BBBZZZZZTTTT!!!
SORRY ELSIE, BUT YOU ARE FLAT-OUT WRONG!!!
"Evolution" happens due to discrete genetic mutations. What you are proposing would necessitate that a genetic evolution which had not previously occured (or at least previously been propigated) suddenly occured widely spread throughout an entire population. That's not what the principle of philogenesis through natural selection, commonly called "the theory of evolution," describes.
Your commonly held misconception of evolution is commonplace: many believe that evolution is both chance and gradual; but the occurence of genetic alterations is chance, but instantaneous, not gradual; the propagation and aggegation of theose changes were thought by Darwin to be "gradual," but not at all chance. (Scientists ditched the notion of gradual evolution long ago.)
Any given mutation happens to one organism. At the moment of conception, chance (ID?) determines which mutation is passed on. From then on, it's not chance, but natural law. If that organism succeeds in succesfully reproducing, it's new genes will be passed on. If the new genes are adaptively superior, it's genes will be passed on at a faster rate than other members of its species. If the genes are critically adaptively superior, it's genes will be passed on to the exclusion of all other members of that organisms' race (at least under a given set of circumstances), and speciation will have occured. (Frequently, both those with the new gene and those lacking it will both survive, but under mutually exclusive conditions. This is actually most common, and is how "family trees" branch.)
In the case of humans, scientists can confirm through genetics that at some point in human history (about 20,000 years ago), something happened to a woman that was so remarkable that her offspring survived, to the exclusion of all other lineages. ALL HUMAN BEINGS ARE DESCENDED FROM HER. The implication was so dramatic that even scientists who reject intelligent design vigorously couldn't help but to call it, "The Eve Hypothesis."
This is not any "seven degrees of separation" crap, where we are all cousins some thousands of degrees removed. Science says we are all direct, matrilineal descendants of the same woman. This is not at all inconsistent with evolution; it just begs the question: what evolutionary advantage could be so great?
As a former confirmed Roman Catholic, I had to take a good look at the fruit of the church. It is obvious to me that the RC has traveled a path of traditions that has made the scripture of none effect. From it's courting of Theistic Evolution to it's blind eye towards the worship of Mary in Roman Catholic Latin America, to it's tacit sanctioning of homosexuality in it's seminaries, any truth seeking individual should be convinced that the RC has steered off course.
I will readily admit that there are individuals in the RC who are trying to stem the tide of idolatry within the church -- including Benedict XVI. This is commendable, and may be a work of God. One look at the Pope's pronouncements will make any serious Catholic realize the beaten path has left the narrow road. I pray his efforts to right the ship are successful. Will he be able to focus the church back on the worship of Jesus Christ, and off of the worship of shrines to Mary and the Saints? Only time will tell.
Many Catholics are believers in Jesus Christ, just like many Jews became believers in Jesus despite their religious leaders love for traditions over the Word of God. I pray the current leadership forges a path exclusively to the cross and the resurrection as the Word of God does.
Those eager to expunge God’s fingerprints from nature weren’t concerned by this shortcoming in Darwin’s material explanation for life, because Darwin and his contemporaries thought a single cell was a simple blob of protoplasm. How hard could it be for nature to randomly produce something so simple?
In those days the cell was a black box, a mystery. But in the 20th century, scientists were able to open that black box and peek inside. There they found not a simple blob but a world of complex circuits, miniaturized motors, and digital code. We now know that even the simplest functional cell is almost unfathomably complex, containing at least 250 genes and their corresponding proteins.
Explains New Zealand geneticist Michael Denton, each cell “is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms.”
The odds of a primordial soup randomly burping up even one protein strand of moderate length are dramatically less than 1 chance in 10150.
It’s hard to grasp how long these odds are—one followed by 150 zeros. We know that a lot of strange things can happen in a place as big and old as our universe, but as mathematician and philosopher William Dembski explains in the Cambridge University Press book The Design Inference, the universe isn’t remotely big enough, old enough, or fast enough to generate that much complexity.
Nor have attempts to explain this complexity as the natural outworking of the laws of nature proven successful. The best explanation? INTELLIGENT DESIGN. (emphasis mine)
excerpt from http://www.discovery.org/scripts/vi...nd=view&id=2350
Focus on last sentence, last paragraph: "The best explanation? INTELLIGENT DESIGN."
Having a SOUL?
>> Having a SOUL? <<
*GRIN* Congratulations, Elsie. Pat, tell her what she's won.
(You mean, of course, having a RATIONAL [i.e., human] soul, as opposed to an ANIMAL soul.)
I mean a LIVING soul.
Not to be argumentative, just because I thought you might find this interesting:
Ancient Jews, Chinese, Greeks, and Romans shared a common notion about the nature of the soul: chiefly that there were two, not one, essences.
One is the anima, or animal soul. This gave people mortal life; it *animated* them, and was responsible for their *animal* instincts. It is this soul which Paul is referring to when he says that we must die.
The other is the ratio, or rational soul. This soul is eternal; it is what gives us spiritual life and makes us capable of withstanding our primal instincts. This is the soul which truly comes to life once the animal soul is dead. The goal of asceticism, found in Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Chinese cultures, was to mortify ("make dead") the animal soul, so as to liberate the rational soul.
Animals are called animals precisely because they are thought to have an animal soul. This does not make them divine, since the "divine spark," the "breath of life," the "Holy Spirit" (Pneuma, like spiritus and animus, means "wind"), are rational, not animal. (And please keep in mind that in this sense, "rational" is not synonymous with "logical," as it has become abused in English to mean.)
Saying a body ("corpse") has a soul is merely to say it is alive ("animated"); "soul" in that sense does not impart it with any human value or hope of salvation; It is when a body has a rational soul ("psyche") that it is considered sacred to Christians.
Like I said, I don't mean to be argumentative; I just think it helps to understand writers such as St. Paul if you are aware of what he means by certain concepts. I'm not saying these are the Christian beliefs Paul was teaching; I'm saying that when Paul used these terms, this is the incumbent meaning they had ot the people he preached to.
To explain one thing about "rational." It did not mean "logical." It is one word which was pretty much destroyed by the translators of Freud and Nietzche who gave us the terminally confused word, "rationalize."
The rational soul is capable of choosing consciously. In that respect, it can be said to be logical. But it can also choose to base its decision on faith, not mere logic. Hence, "rational" can mean "faith-based" OR "logical," as opposed to "fear-based" or "primal" or "instinctive."
So when early Christians equate "rational" with good, they are dismissing the spiritual intuition or faith, as they may seem to the post-Freudian, American reader. Rather, they are equating with making decisions based on an informed conscience, rather than one "of the flesh."
Oops!
"they are dismissing" should read "they are NOT dismissing."
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