Posted on 11/28/2005 3:40:35 AM PST by PatrickHenry
"Science is based on observation not naturalism. Since we observe order and function in the universe, I think it is legitimate to infer a Designer, according to the laws of Cause and Effect."
Observation requires something to observe. Methodological naturalism is a requirement of science because no other stance allows one to test your claims. It does not follow logically that when one has found order that one has also found a Designer of that order. The existence of a deity/designer is not testable by science. That's the realm of theology and philosophy. Science can't say that a deity/designer does or doesn't exist; it's simply not a scientific question. Science has limits.
I was thinking of the type where the ToE would say....
Event A happened, then event B, then C, then D......
Where the CHANCES of A happening are W, (or DID happen)
B happening is X,
C is Y,
D=Z and so forth.
Uh... any way he WANTED??
It's up to us to try and FIND it!
It is the glory of God to conceal a matter;
to search out a matter is the glory of kings.
Job 28
1 "There is a mine for silver
and a place where gold is refined.
2 Iron is taken from the earth,
and copper is smelted from ore.
3 Man puts an end to the darkness;
he searches the farthest recesses
for ore in the blackest darkness.
4 Far from where people dwell he cuts a shaft,
in places forgotten by the foot of man;
far from men he dangles and sways.
5 The earth, from which food comes,
is transformed below as by fire;
6 sapphires [a] come from its rocks,
and its dust contains nuggets of gold.
7 No bird of prey knows that hidden path,
no falcon's eye has seen it.
8 Proud beasts do not set foot on it,
and no lion prowls there.
9 Man's hand assaults the flinty rock
and lays bare the roots of the mountains.
10 He tunnels through the rock;
his eyes see all its treasures.
11 He searches [b] the sources of the rivers
and brings hidden things to light.
12 "But where can wisdom be found?
Where does understanding dwell?
13 Man does not comprehend its worth;
it cannot be found in the land of the living.
14 The deep says, 'It is not in me';
the sea says, 'It is not with me.'
15 It cannot be bought with the finest gold,
nor can its price be weighed in silver.
16 It cannot be bought with the gold of Ophir,
with precious onyx or sapphires.
17 Neither gold nor crystal can compare with it,
nor can it be had for jewels of gold.
18 Coral and jasper are not worthy of mention;
the price of wisdom is beyond rubies.
19 The topaz of Cush cannot compare with it;
it cannot be bought with pure gold.
20 "Where then does wisdom come from?
Where does understanding dwell?
21 It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing,
concealed even from the birds of the air.
22 Destruction [c] and Death say,
'Only a rumor of it has reached our ears.'
23 God understands the way to it
and he alone knows where it dwells,
24 for he views the ends of the earth
and sees everything under the heavens.
25 When he established the force of the wind
and measured out the waters,
26 when he made a decree for the rain
and a path for the thunderstorm,
27 then he looked at wisdom and appraised it;
he confirmed it and tested it.
28 And he said to man,
'The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom,
and to shun evil is understanding.' "
The observation of a phenomenon (lightning, tides, seasons, sunrise, planetary motion, life, disease, etc.) is not verifiable evidence that a deity is responsible for the phenomenon, nor does the claim that such a deity exists provide any testable (or even comprehensible) explanation for the phenomenon. Deities may exist (science is silent on that topic), but their existence adds nothing to our understanding of nature.
The links I give examples where scientists do just that, but not in such a simple way...
In the case of radiometric dating, for example, several different isotopic dates are compared - they are then compared to give a statistical distribution of dates with a certain standard deviation - if the deviation is small enough, it can be said that a date is found within a good certainty (i.e. percentage error). If the dates don't converge upon a good certainty, the data can be said to not be good, and no certainty can be reached. What is never found, though, are out-of-sequence radiological dates that converge within a particular certainty showing a 1 million-year-old stratus containing a Mesozoic fossil, for example.
Examples abound, but one has to read the details of the research carefully to glean the nitty-gritty out of it.
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 Now the earth was [a] formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.
6 And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
9 And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good.
11 Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.
14 And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.
20 And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth." 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.
24 And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, [b] and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
29 Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food." And it was so.
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.
2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested [a] from all his work. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
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This is the end of the Priestly version, Now Genesis 2 4-25
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4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens- 5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth [b] and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth [c] and there was no man to work the ground, 6 but streams [d] came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground- 7 the LORD God formed the man [e] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
8 Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
10 A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin [f] and onyx are also there.) 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. [g] 14 The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."
19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
But for Adam [h] no suitable helper was found. 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs [i] and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib [j] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
23 The man said,
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman, [k] '
for she was taken out of man."
24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
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SO WHICH ONE IS IT?
I think it would be kind of you to show me the specific differences within the two sets of passages.
Why not?
There are two arguements...one that macro-evolution maintains a rough balance with species rising or falling depending on conditions, mutations, rocks falling out of the sky ect. The other states that man has disrupted this balance, has destroyed ecosystems to suit his own avaricious hatred of the Earth to the point that our species could totally destroy itself and the very earth as well, especially as our science moves beyond mere atomic weapons which themselves could erase life on earth.
So how could Macro evolution have created an organism with a consciousness that acts antithetically to the processes that created it, that could very well destroy it through war fare or miscalculations in the manipulations of the very genetic codes of life?
That is the shadow of the mountain that biologists avoid adressing, the question that Christians maintain that Genesis chapter 3 addresses.
Read post #420
I dunno. It failed to plan ahead?
(If I'da known there'd be a test I mighta studied.)
I argue for inteference in the process, especially where man is concerned.
If you note in Genesis, God says "let the Earth bring forth.." when describing the creation of all life and the enviroment in which it came to exist. Fine, evolution and faith may have some common ground there. When is comes to man how-ever, note the closer intimacy God exhibits with man when he states..."Let us make man in Our image and our Likeness...." In the first command note a somewhat distant emotional tone, as God seems to command the earth and life forms subordinate to man into existence, from more of a stand offish way. In the second command, note the closer intimacy, especially as God personally forms man from the dust(red mud man as Adam is translated) and breathes his own essence into man giving him life.
What ever the truth regarding evolution, man I believe was created separately from its processes, unfortunately becoming spiritually corrupted falling out of balance with God as well as with Nature(or Macro Evolution as I call it for those offended by the use of the term Nature).
The irreducible complexity of all organisms.
Simple. Because the traits that give man this ability, to transcend and rise above macro evolution, provided a selective advantage at some point.
Evolution is not a person. It does not act it its own interests.
"Simple. Because the traits that give man this ability, to transcend and rise above macro evolution, provided a selective advantage at some point.
That is a speculative answer to my own speculative question, but let's not call it science...one must have proof after all.
I say there was outside interference in the development of humans, ones opinions on the evolutionary process not withstanding...
And no, I was not speaking of Evolution in the personal but rather as a system of processes, much it of basically input/output cause and effect...in light of this system, I was questioning the ability of this system to produce an organism with a consciousness that works antithetically to evolution with-out outside influences shaping this organism's development.
I question the process of evolution being able to produce an organism that seems ill suited to its own enviroment without extensive modifications to that enviroment or extensive protections against same.
I question the process of evolution in its development of an organism that prays to a God that supposedly never existed or even can conceptualize an idea such as the divine unless there was an out-side influence on an otherwise inertially running evolutionary process. Ideas don't just arise from nothing, even legends have a basis in fact. The universe remains a closed system running towards entropy unless an outside force acts transtemporally upon it.
It is too pat an answer to claim that religions began when men tried to rationally understand the larger processes around him,ie. early man saw a lightning bolt and said, "GOlly jeeze, it must have been some kind of god that made that thing...let's kill a woolly mammoth so lightning god won't get mad at us";for the evolutionary process should logically have inured the development of the hominid species against that type of fear and dread and guilt...other than to give the hominids the instinctive sense to get out of the rain.
On this last point, I add that I find it interesting that many modern philosophers,atheists, socialists, ect advocate a throwing off of the shackles of religion by advocating a return to an "imagined" type of evolutionary AMORAL state of grace(no quilt,no shame,no obligations). I'm thinking Nietsche here but there are others who claim that religion impedes the scientific knowledge of men and there-fore his evolutionary development.
To them I would ask, why then did evolutionary processes produce such a disharmonic state of thought to develop and persist. Why should such a state of emptiness exist in the consciousness of the hominid species that they should have cried out to a non-existent God(that the evolutionary process as it currently is argued for should not have produced in the thoughts of man) to come and fill this void? Evolutionary processes should not have created such a sad empty creature.
That does not answer any of the questions that I asked you.
TOE and the speculations of its prognosticators run quite beyond the bounds of true science.
Wolf
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