Posted on 02/17/2006 10:36:42 AM PST by SirLinksalot
156, former member of MENSA, and I believe in evolution.
God created it.
You win.
Mine is significantly higher, and I am way beyond being skeptical of evolution.
I once inquired about being in the Orange County Mensa group. When I told the Director my GRE scores, he said that I shouldn't apply for Mensa because my score was too high. He suggested something like the "International Society for Philosophical Inquiry" (?). They are only for the 99.9% in IQ. That was about 20 years ago. I ended up not applying to either. I got a social life in other surroundings. Anyway, count me as another one of those idiot people who just doesn't see the evidence for speciation (macro-evolution). I just don't have enough faith to believe in strictly materialistic evolution.
Excuse me? Quantum Mechanics?
Perhaps we can start with something very simple. Tell me, in whatever quantum terms you prefer, what the distinction is between a rock and a rabbit.
This should be interesting...
Well, the Bohr model is what the periodic table of element is made up of - the basis of chemistry. Then you have molecular and organic chemistry that goes down to the same detail, but in life.
That's what I see though.
Obviously something sparked life as it began... we don't know yet what that is. But I'm pretty sure within 20 years we will. I don't think there's a limit on what we can learn.
But that's just me.
LOL, these guys have simply never been socialized.
Abiogenesis, as we are repeatedly reminded, is irrelevant to the theory of evolution, and you didn't even come close to answering my query. Thank you for your civil response though.
Only 40%? There must have been another 50% who were lying.
Norton has had difficulty getting professors at his university to talk about the subject. He said one of them dismissed his request by saying, “there's nothing intelligent in intelligent design.”
Note to Mr. Norton: In the case of this particular professor, what he said is true - because intelligence certainly skipped him.
I think the poster responded your question. The distinction made was that a rabbit is alive, but a rock is not.
What is the answer?
Some of these evolutionists are poor logicians.
You're not doing too well yourself:
If the universe is ateleological, there are no endpoints. The man's statement is self-contradictory.
No, it isn't, because a) you're talking about a different sort of "endpoint" than he is, and b) even by your own version, your claim is simply a statement of your belief, and not something that you have managed to establish or is so self-evident that it warrants your flat declaration that a statement about ateological endpoints would be on its face oxymoronic.
"A rabbit floats!"
"Yeah, it floats!"
You're stating the obvious. The question is, can you make such a distinction at the quantum level.
Telos is Greek for end or purpose. If the universe is teleological then its development is toward a purpose or end. That is central premise -- a self evident "if-then statement" -- of Aristotelean metaphysics. Aristotelean metaphysics prevailed until positivism supplanted it with the notion of an ateleological universe.
The central theses of Darwin's work are descent with modification and natural selection. My friends in the biology department, evolutionists all, tell me that the process of evolution for which these premises are central is a purposeless process, that it did not intent man or dog. I'm taking their word for it since they earned PhD's in their fields.
A purposeless process is by definition ateleological. There is nothing that can be designated an end in the metaphysical sense. We can talk about the present stage of evolution and what it has produced up till this moment. We cannot foresee what it might produce next, since the project is driven not by reason (unless you now think man is totally in control of his own fate) but by the interaction of organism and environment. Therefore it is improper to speak of ends either temporally or metaphysically.
It is also invalid to think of evolution as moving from low to high, except in the sense of from simple to complex. But to consider complexity morally or metaphysically superior to simplicity is to engage in value judgements, which are, strictly speaking, outside the province of science.
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