Darwin’s Sad Legacy (evolution invented to give death and suffering a positive explanation?)

AiG ^ | April 14, 2009 | Dr. Tommy Mitchell

[GodGunsGuts]

The common thread throughout Darwin’s life was his continual struggle with the issue of death and suffering. He was never able to reconcile the existence of death, disease, and struggle with the character of a loving God:

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.[1]

Darwin was unable to understand why a loving Creator God would allow the horrible things he witnessed in nature and everyday life. Animals fed on one another; creatures ripped each other apart; women died in childbirth, etc. The world seemed heartless and cruel. Darwin’s eventual expansion of the concept of evolution seemed to provide a somewhat positive purpose for the suffering and death he could not explain.

Two of Darwin’s biographers went so far as to imply that...

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Cool. An actual biologist for a change.

[tpanther]

I see you ignored the facts and continue to project.

You haven’t posted any.

---

Reading is still fundamental.

[Filo]

Reading is still fundamental.

And yet it's quite worthless without the ability to think, as you've proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

The fact remains that your various articles and other opinion pieces have nothing to do with facts.

I don't care if everyone surveyed thought that the planet was really a big rabbit turd. If that's not the case then it's not the case regardless.

I thought it was only the AGW folks who couldn't figure out that consensus has no place in science.

As I’ve said, you haven’t posted a single fact.

None to refute Evolution and none to prove the existence of God*.

Not one.

And, to be honest, I don’t think you ever will.

You simply don’t/can’t understand the underlying science behind evolution and, therefore, you won’t be able to mount a credible attack against it.

You’d be better off attacking a tank with a toothpick.

I, on the other hand, understand my opponents. I’ve read the Bible, I’ve seen the ID arguments against Evolution, have understood them sufficiently to see their glaring flaws and have dispatched them as so much noise.

That’s how this thing works.

Posting poll results does nothing to advance your cause although if ignorance loves company I can see why you’re enjoying them. . .

[betty boop]

In short, if you believe you are thinking, you are merely experiencing a delusion, an epiphenomenon. And you? Well, if evolution is true, then there is no ‘you.’ All that exists is a meat machine called Filo and somewhere nearby in the unseen realm hovers an impersonal intelligence-force that works through the body called Filo. It directs the puppet Filo to open its’ mouth in order that words unintelligible to Filo can be uttered.

Brilliantly put, spirited irish! And oh so very true.

The materialist/naturalist/physicalist point of view ultimately turns man into an absurdity of nature. Everything is pointless in such a (truncated) world. Given human suffering and the pointlessness of existence, the most rational thing a man can do is to commit suicide.

But I think our friend Filo has not quite thought this all through yet. Maybe he will some day.

Thank you so very much, spirited irish, for your outstanding essay/post!

[betty boop]

It is, but it's a different type of faith. I have faith that Mankind will find the answers. Not all of us, obviously (some are too brainwashed by silly notions) but we, as a species, will discover these answers.

So you ascribe to the supposition that "Man is the measure of all things." Okay. But what "standard" is man using in his measurements? His own convenience? His own preferences? His own desires?

Without absolutes, everything is "relative." So one man's opinion is as good as any other's. In the end, it doesn't make any difference what men believe. I say the sky is blue and you say it's red. We're both right if man is "the measure."

But if this technique makes us both right, then how can we formulate any objective statement about what and how the universe really is? How can we come to consensus on anything? What would be the basis of meaningful human communication? How far do you think science would get, if it really were to take your prescription to heart?

[betty boop]

Defining God* as "just is" kinda takes the fun (and thought) out of it, don't you think?

By this reasoning, macroevolution theory would be equally wrong.

[Filo]

But I think our friend Filo has not quite thought this all through yet. Maybe he will some day.

Oh I very much have, and clearly more deeply than you have.

The difference is that I don't need any reassurance for our insignificance in the universe. For the fact that I'm a "meat machine."

You do.

And, for the most part, that's okay.

I've never had any qualms with those who seek out religion to answer those types of questions, to bring meaning to their personal lives.

It's when they push beyond those boundaries to defy logic and reason and to declare that clearly correct science is not correct just because it runs counter to what their pastor pounded into their malleable minds at age 8.

At that point religion goes from a comfort to an abomination.

[betty boop]

[Man] ‘wills’ himself not to know what he really does know.

Another penetrating insight, spirited irish! And a beautiful essay/post! Thank you ever so much for it!

[hosepipe]

[ By this reasoning, macroevolution theory would be equally wrong. ]

Ouch!,,, that had to hurt..

[Filo]

So you ascribe to the supposition that "Man is the measure of all things."

Not man. Intelligence.

Another intelligent species, if we knew one, would reach the same conclusions we did about evolution because they would follow the facts.

The rest of your nonsense is just that and deserves no response.

[Filo]

By this reasoning, macroevolution theory would be equally wrong.

Only to those incapable of grasping what it is and how it works.

To the rest of us there is absolutely no comparison.

[hosepipe]

[ The rest of your nonsense is just that and deserves no response. ]

Uh Oh!... hes doing the backstoke..

[Filo]

Uh Oh!... hes doing the backstoke..

By ignoring faux-metaphysical nonsense?

Not really.

Some things really are too stupid to respond to.

[GodGunsGuts]

Filo: Defining God* as “just is” kinda takes the fun (and thought) out of it, don’t you think?

Betty Boop: By this reasoning, macroevolution theory would be equally wrong.

GGG: LOL...very good point, BB. Macroevolution has never been observed to actually happen...not in nature, nor in the lab.

[betty boop]

It's when they push beyond those boundaries to defy logic and reason and to declare that clearly correct science is not correct just because it runs counter to what their pastor pounded into their malleable minds at age 8.

"Logos" is the epistemological root of the word "logic." Without the absolute Logos, logic and reason itself would be impossible. Which evidently is a point you wish to demonstrate for us.

BTW FWIW, I did not get anything pounded into my head by clergy in my childhood. I had no religious instruction to speak of when I was a child; I was never confirmed into any religion as child. (My Father is a Deist and wouldn't permit it.) My theological perspective is based on God's four revelations: Holy Scripture, the Incarnation, the Book of Creation (the natural world), and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. I discovered the four seamlessly dovetail on all levels and mutually agree.

Recognizing this, at that point in my life (a couple decades ago), I accepted Jesus Christ — the Son of God, the Word, Logos of the Beginning, the Alpha–Omega, and final Judge of all things and especially of souls — as my savior and redeemer.

You keep insisting that the materialist/naturalist/physicalist point of view yields "clearly correct science." Okay. I'll agree with your statement provided you concur that science limits itself to such things as are material and physical. Which is what its method is supposed to do.

But there are many things "in heaven and earth" that do not and cannot fall within the range of direct scientific observation. Do you think things do not exist unless they are amenable to scientific analysis? In other words, that the (strictly self-limited) scientific method is the touchstone or criterion of what it means for something to be "real?"

[Filo]

Macroevolution has never been observed to actually happen...not in nature, nor in the lab.

Actually it has been observed, unless you are one of those who would say that "planetary formation has never been observed so clearly there are no planets. . ."

Or something equally stupid.

[betty boop]

The rest of your nonsense is just that and deserves no response.

It's not "nonsense," simply something that (clearly) you do not understand.

If I were you, I'd stop parading my ignorance.... (Jeepers, I'd give the same advice to Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Lewontin, Stephen Pinker, Jacques Monod, and a litany of other prominent scientists; so please don't think I'm singling you out for special treatment.)

Oh, and by the way, where did "intelligence" come from? Clever matter in its (random) motions???

Just for the fun of it, try to explain how intelligence could arise from a random cause.

[Filo]

You keep insisting that the materialist/naturalist/physicalist point of view yields "clearly correct science." Okay. I'll agree with your statement provided you concur that science limits itself to such things as are material and physical. Which is what its method is supposed to do.

But there are many things "in heaven and earth" that do not and cannot fall within the range of direct scientific observation. Do you think things do not exist unless they are amenable to scientific analysis? In other words, that the (strictly self-limited) scientific method is the touchstone or criterion of what it means for something to be "real?"

Yes.

If science can't touch it then it's not real.

All of that metaphysical hokum is, therefore, just that.

[Filo]

It's not "nonsense," simply something that (clearly) you do not understand.

No, I understand it which is how I know it is nonsense.

If I were you, I'd stop parading my ignorance....

I haven't demonstrated any yet.

Oh, and by the way, where did "intelligence" come from? Clever matter in its (random) motions???

Just for the fun of it, try to explain how intelligence could arise from a random cause.

Been there, done that. It's well covered in the textbooks.

Intelligence arose, slowly, as a survival mechanism. Just like virtually every other trait in living things.

The sad part is that in today's society we're actually countering evolution's tendency to weed out the stupid. We are, in fact, allowing them to outbreed the intelligent.

So sad.

[betty boop]

Macroevolution has never been observed to actually happen...not in nature, nor in the lab.

And that's the truth of it! Well said, GGG!

So if a science based on observation hasn't observed macroevolution, in what way can we say macroevolution is science? Why shouldn't we think of it as just some bizarre philosophy instead, one constructed for the explicit purpose of obviating all causation from outside of the four-dimensional-spacetime construct of reality?