Posted on 11/24/2009 6:50:51 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
Pro-Darwin consensus doesn't rule out intelligent design
--snip--
(CNN) -- While we officially celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" on November 24, celebrations of Darwin's legacy have actually been building in intensity for several years. Darwin is not just an important 19th century scientific thinker. Increasingly, he is a cultural icon.
Darwin is the subject of adulation that teeters on the edge of hero worship, expressed in everything from scholarly seminars and lecture series to best-selling new atheist tracts like those by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. The atheists claim that Darwin disproved once and for all the argument for intelligent design from nature.
And that of course is why he remains hugely controversial. A Zogby poll commissioned by the Discovery Institute this year found that 52 percent of Americans agree "the development of life was guided by intelligent design." Those who are not scientists may wonder if they have a right to entertain skepticism about Darwinian theory.
Read a leading Darwin proponent's view that evolution leaves no room for intelligent design theory...
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
I don't think it's that huge an assumption, really. But I don't think I can prove it happens, so I'll let it drop.
So, initially when there was absolutely no life...my original question...how did life begin? I am not trying to annoy you, simply trying to get what a concise thought on the matter is. I have never read nor heard of an answer to that question that is reasonable by any sense of logic and reason.
I don't know. I think the current hypotheses have to do with self-organizing molecules and self-replicating RNA. That's all just chemistry, as I understand it. I'll admit it's not my strong point. Here's a page that goes into somewhat greater detail.
BTW, life either is or isn’t...pre-life is no life. To my knowledge, there can be no in between.
In that case, you need to define "life." You said yourself "It is debatable whether virus’ are living beings or not." If there's a debate, doesn't that imply that "life either is or isn't" is an oversimplification?
Lastly, my point with the Beagle is why are there not large animals popping out? We truly now have a “soup” from which life may be created if the atheist view is to be accepted. There really is no reason to begin with a simple single cell organism is there? If so, why?
Nobody thinks that large animals ever just popped out. Nobody thinks that a complex organism would come together slowly in the "soup" until it emerged fully formed. That would require the cells to know what they were supposed to be from the moment of their formation, without any DNA to guide them, and it would be an application of the common fallacious estimate of the probability of a cell being formed. Besides, I think in that case it really isn't much of an assumption to conclude that a half-beagle would be eaten by something long, long before it ever became a whole beagle.
BTW, Ha Ha Thats Very Logical, thanks for debating with me.
You're welcome. Thank you for the civil comment.
If the theory is about a singularity, then it is about something. If it was "out of nothing", there would be no singularity.
BTW, I'm of the school that says the Darwinians, to be Darwinians, must continue to believe in "descent" as deriving from a common ancestor, that having been Darwin's fundamental doctrine.
I don't believe the case can be made that current evolutionary views that ALSO include consideration of viral insertions hold to the original standard. After all, you have single species with different subspecies having different insertions.
Note, I never suggested that insertions were "random" or simply a background noise sort of thing. For all we know the genes get tossed up in viruses, inserted in our genomes, and we proceed to become the creature "designed" to use those viruses.
Ever wonder what makes sub-atomic particles assemble themselves into atoms?
I thought the Designer put them together like Tinkertoys. No?
More seriously: I guess I thought that's just what they did given their inherent properties. I'm not sure I thought about it further than that.
It seems counter-intuitive that the protons, which should tend to repel each other all clump together in the middle. Do you think anyone has ever calculated the probability of that happening?
No idea. Does this have something to do with the nuclear force? Subatomic physics isn’t my strong suit either.
I do not know html so cannot differentiate my font to make better sense of our discussion by showing you what I am answering to...so, bear with me.
Where I have a problem with atheistic evolution is that they first of all cannot come up with a concrete theory on how life began. I went to the site you linked to..thanks, it was good to read. The best they can come up with is that life evolved...which if one thinks about it...is rather crazy. Specific life forms may evolve, but life did not evolve. There was nothing living before life...so it did not evolve. But, let’s move on a little bit...you state that there is no record of “large animals popping out” and I totally agree with you. Indeed, there has never been any small living new organisms which just popped out on record. There are organisms that have mutated but none that have been newly created on record. Think about that for a while...here we now have an environment very rich in life...very very rich in the “soup” some like to refer to. Yet, life only was created new during the initial stages of it’s own creation.
Next, we are asked to believe that some organism that never flew ‘evolved’ somehow into a being that could fly. Then we are asked to believe that along the evolutionary trail a specific bird (can’t remember the name, but can get it if you like) evolved a ability to fly from what is now the North American continent (Canada I believe) all the way to Hawaii...a trip that has no places to rest, eat, or drink along the way once the bird is over water. The trip is barely makeable, so how did they evolve to that?
How could a single cell organism all of a sudden grow a set of lungs to breathe air? You cannot live with partial lungs, indeed you cannot live with partial livers, brains, etc. Yet, we are to believe that something existed before lungs, etc. and made an evolutionary trip to fully working set of lungs.
I agree that a definition of life does need to exist which is realistic. I would think that consciousness would have to be included. Yes, it has been proven that plants are sentient beings. I don’t know if you have ever seen anything die, but there is a spark, if you will, which leaves the body when we die. Christians understand that it is the soul leaving the body, not sure how atheists make out what it is. But, the spark/soul is energy...what is left is a pile of chemicals...without the energy. So, that energy, that spark is life. The body is almost irrelevant if you really think about it. It is simply mass when death occurs, albeit it is food for other organisms. What atheist evolutionist put forward is that the chemicals and mass are everything and ignore the energy. They miss the boat of what life is and of course do not have a real clue as to how life began because of this. They come up with grand theories of “sub-life” or “pre-life”, but again they are simply talking the physical aspect. The chemical compounds, etc. That is not life, that is simply chemistry. If they really knew how life was created they could create new life...life which has never been on earth before. But, they cannot because they simply do not have a clue. They might be able to make complex compounds of molecules...proteins, amino acids...but come on...who in their right mind would call that life? But, they try to push that idea so that it fits their preconceived idea of creation...
So, maybe ask yourself more carefully...how did life begin before there was life. Life has to include some level of consciousness, pretending a protein or amino acid is life is really changing the logical definition to fit their own concepts.
Sorry to jump in here, good discussion... :) God created all matter and for that matter...time. So, God can create anything, anytime, anywhere so to speak and does not need matter to create matter. What God gave all of us living creatures is that spark we call life, that energy which sets us apart from inorganic matter.
We are made from the ‘dust of the Earth’.
If one doesn’t believe that, then take it away, and see what happens.
Likely clay. The finest grained type of soil around.
Even though that definition is not likely to satisfy you.
But here’s something interesting....
Shaped from clay [origin of life]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1515522/posts
Looks like scientists came late to the party again.
Could refer to atomic particles, too, if you want to stretch it.
Either way, it’s another example of God using the definition of something to explain it instead of an untranslatable Hebrew word.
Probably a bazillion times. Perhaps when other scientists and evolutionists stop saying that it does.
Also, it would appear it is the subject matter that causes so much controversy, and not the fact that GGG has been posting a lot of evo-creo threads lately. (referring to the comments on the thread you linked to. And, Thanks for that link)
There’s nothing new under the sun.
Crevo debates haven’t changed much in the last four years.
Creationists are still challenging the conclusions of the evolutionists about the fossil record and evos are still attacking creationists within the first couple posts, even on a thread THEY (evos) posted with the same knee jerk responses.
It’s pretty irrelevant to them that science comes to the same conclusion that Scripture taught thousands of years ago.
Kind of makes you wonder (if one thought about it) how those writers of the Bible got so much right, since they didn’t have the benefit of the pool of knowledge and technology available to us today.
It’s almost like someone told them or something,
Darn skippy. So deal with it on the merits.
Too bad he isn't from a more reputable institution, like the University of East Anglia.
If there’s a God, science will point to Him. If there’s not, it won’t. Ergo, it’s impossible to completely sparate discussion of the two. That’s why Jim’s ruling that these threads can go in News because they don’t deal with doctrine is a sound one.
There are plenty of hypocrites in the Church, but don't let that stop you from joining...we always have room for one more. :-)
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