Posted on 09/26/2014 11:44:23 AM PDT by Red Badger
A Virginia Tech geobiologist with collaborators from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found evidence in the fossil record that complex multicellularity appeared in living things about 600 million years ago – nearly 60 million years before skeletal animals appeared during a huge growth spurt of new life on Earth known as the Cambrian Explosion.
The discovery published online Wednesday in the journal Nature contradicts several longstanding interpretations of multicellular fossils from at least 600 million years ago.
"This opens up a new door for us to shine some light on the timing and evolutionary steps that were taken by multicellular organisms that would eventually go on to dominate the Earth in a very visible way," said Shuhai Xiao, a professor of geobiology in the Virginia Tech College of Science. "Fossils similar to these have been interpreted as bacteria, single-cell eukaryotes, algae, and transitional forms related to modern animals such as sponges, sea anemones, or bilaterally symmetrical animals. This paper lets us put aside some of those interpretations."
In an effort to determine how, why, and when multicellularity arose from single-celled ancestors, Xiao and his collaborators looked at phosphorite rocks from the Doushantuo Formation in central Guizhou Province of South China, recovering three-dimensionally preserved multicellular fossils that showed signs of cell-to-cell adhesion, differentiation, and programmed cell death—qualities of complex multicellular eukaryotes such as animals and plants.
The discovery sheds light on how and when solo cells began to cooperate with other cells to make a single, cohesive life form. The complex multicellularity evident in the fossils is inconsistent with the simpler forms such as bacteria and single-celled life typically expected 600 million years ago.
While some hypotheses can now be discarded, several interpretations may still exist, including the multicellular fossils being transitional forms related to animals or multicellular algae. Xiao said future research will focus on a broader paleontological search to reconstruct the complete life cycle of the fossils.
More information: "Cell differentiation and germ–soma separation in Ediacaran animal embryo-like fossils" Lei Chen, Shuhai Xiao, Ke Pang, Chuanming Zhou & Xunlai Yuan Nature (2014) DOI: 10.1038/nature13766
Journal reference: Nature search and more info website
Provided by Virginia Tech
Point is, science is a set of beliefs, processed in the brain by scientists and others in the same way religious beliefs are processed.
All I’m trying to say to you is that scientific naturalism presumes to explain all things in terms of natural science.
But the most clear headed and honest of scholars will admit there is no natural explanation for consciousness or self.
How were these rocks dated?
Cordially,
There is a question in post #48 for you to answer: cite evidence of your claims, or concede my point.
Mdmathis6:”There, there little scientist...”
There, there little nincompoop...don’t bother your pretty head with matters you don’t comprehend.
What? You don’t enjoy being patronized?
The fact is, you have no clue what I believe, so you assume, and assume incorrectly.
Reasonisfaith’s statement, stripped of it’s qualifiers, is based on not just a lie, a d*mn*d lie.
Stripped of it’s qualifiers, the statement would read, in effect: “metaphysical and methodological naturalism are the same thing, and that is atheism.”
Seems to me this lie is being told today, not only by atheists themselves, but also by (instead of “fundamentalists” let me call them) literalists, who simply wish to discredit the entire scientific enterprise, by labeling it all as “atheist”.
So, in post #55, I don’t call Reasonisfaith a liar, merely point to the d*mn*d lie on which his/her statement is based.
I believe the distinctions between methodological and metaphysical naturalism need to be made and defended AT ALL COSTS.
Do you disagree?
Reasonisfaith: “Point is, science is a set of beliefs, processed in the brain by scientists and others in the same way religious beliefs are processed.”
Not the same thing.
There’s a huge difference between saying, “I believe in the supernatural power of God” versus “I believe the sky is naturally blue”.
Even when we say something like, “I believe that germs can cause disease”, speaking of something most people never see, yet still has been reported to us as a reliable, often confirmed physical fact.
So that is quite different from any supernatural beliefs we might hold.
Further, scientific theories, by their nature are never fully “proved”, only confirmed, and are ALWAYS subject to falsification by new data or ideas.
This is vastly different from revealed religious beliefs, intended to be fixed forever.
Reasonisfaith: “All I’m trying to say to you is that scientific naturalism presumes to explain all things in terms of natural science.”
First, let’s note again that the following terms all equate to each other: metaphysical naturalism, philosophical naturalism, ontological naturalism and scientific naturalism. They each equate to the others, all are a form of atheism and all are distinct from methodological naturalism, which is not necessarily atheistic.
But second, and more importantly, the intended role of naturalism in science is simply to define the limits and boundaries of scientific inquiry — science is limited to those subjects which can yield natural explanations of natural processes.
Naturalism is not intended to deny the **existence** of supernatural processes (I.e., miracles) or explanations, only to rule those as outside the realm of science.
Is that really so hard to “get”?
“God told Noah to build him an arkylarky” Your Sunday School students would love that song!
Interesting there was never a direct commandment against Patronization in any holy book... prohibitions against lying, stealing, ect but never against patronization. It might come under the classification of having “a haughty spirit” or the definitions of pride perhaps.
Christ thanked the Father for hiding his wisdom away from the wise of this world and revealing it to babes.
Perhaps you ought to become a Sunday School teacher, you might learn something from the children that will make you a better person of science!
As long as you love being patronized in return, my child, I see nothing necessarily wrong with it.
On the other hand, it is a degradation from normal adult conversation, a form of insult, a mocking (now there’s a word I seem to recall...) and therefore usually counterproductive, to be avoided, when possible.
So I try my best never to be the first to use such talk.
As for your now repeated suggestion, I’ve never felt a desire to teach children, only adults whose postings appear er, ahem... mis - educated and confused. .. ;-)
I don’t know if one can really teach adults until they’ve has some experience with teaching little ones.
“In Him we live and move and HAVE our Being!” so says Paul
You need to think BIGGER! Love DEEPER! If you want to begin to understand what was made deliberately untestable to the wise of this world...study children.
“To the Jews he(Christ) is a stumbling block...to the Greeks(the wise scientists of the day) he is foolishness!” I’m not trying to be patronizing here...Christ has said that only a child like faith can begin to unlock the untestable truths that can’t be measured in a lab...only to discover that these truths were there all the time...just under our noses.
Where Reason untempered by Morality can take us
1. Why Reason can never be Biased
CS Lewis in his allegory ‘Pilgrim’s Regress” envisioned Reason as a forever virgin never prostituting her self with biased colorations of the process of logic. She could lead a person by cold reason to a place they didn’t want to go while forcing those of differing opinions to confront their own illogical thinking; but she would not determine for them whether it would be right or wrong for them to proceed down a chosen path. She had no opinions of the morality of the choices to made, to have such would sully her virginity with bias. The hero of the book asked in despair then how he could know the rightness of the path he faced...Reason said a curious thing;she could not help him to decide between the paths he must take but that she had 3 cousins who can guide him in search...he was to seek out Faith Hope and Charity and they would guide him in ways by Reason she could never consider!
To believe or not to believe a thing, a human considers evidence if he has some reasoning wisdom but a human if he is human must sometimes confront his own emotional doubt,his own pride and his own selfishness despite what his eyes see. Humans because they are emotional, spiritual, as well as having some abilities to think with dispassionate reason can never fully be the steel trap computers some scientists wish they could be.
2. The Eugenecist
It might be logical to some to kill 6.5 billion folks to get down to a more “rational”( the numbers determined with a bit of pre-biased assumptions I fear) number of 500 million but as we also as a species do think morally and spiritually, selfishly as well as logically a survival instinct kicks in for some and others compassionate urge.
“You first” we might proclaim to the Eugenicist who, if he is truly honest in REASONING with himself must ask himself...”why not me first, what is it about me that must survive with the remaining 499,999,999 and not some other... say,a starving Ethiopian girl with a beautiful singing voice!”
The Eugenicist may have concocted a coldly logical, mathematically elegant population reduction treatise supported by tested data and unbeatable hypotheses regarding the need for such a population reduction...ruthless in it’s conclusions but logical. Yet he may never had considered the trap he has set for himself that his logical reasoning had brought him to.
So the policies are enacted, the numbers are run, and the Eugenicist discovers himself to be on the list to be killed...picked by a coldly reasoning computer...”why me and not that starving Ethiopian girl with the good singing voice?” cries the Eugenecist in despair as he sees the guns raised....”I wrote your program why would you have me killed?...why I am practically your father!”
The computer whirs and the answer appears as the trigger hammers fall upon the bullet rims
“1. The girl in question will be fed because she is needed to help maintain racial balance. Her artistic talents are needed to enhance and preserve the artistic heritage of third world cultures.
2. You are not the father of this unit, this unit functions as programmed, your statement is illogical!
3. It has been determined that your death, which will be described by the World Government as a heroic self sacrifice, will help inspire others to accept their own deaths as necessary to preserve the Earth as Mother and to help keep the Earth in perpetual balance per the Georgia Guide Stone protocols that you programmed into the memory banks. As humans have an observable but unexplainable need to worship that which is higher than themselves this impulse will be utilized...you shall be as a God to future generations...Hail Neo Malthus! As for this unit, as programmed by the World government, you are a means to an end!”
The shots are then fired and the sun sets as the first body among billions of bodies are fed into the bio reclamation units!
Actually you need to back up a ways.
It all starts with our initial position: if we accept the premise that the Bible isn’t the true word of God, then knowledge of God’s existence is either nonexistent or extremely unlikely.
But if the opposite premise is true, then every one of us already has innate knowledge of God and therefore belief in God is at least equally if not more valid than belief in the blue sky.
“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20)
At the very least, all naturalism—methodological and otherwise—implies atheism. And most fervent believers in naturalism agree with this.
But even if “methodological naturalism” is not necessarily atheistic, there is a problem: if the Bible is true, then the natural system—which appears in its usual state to be a closed system—experienced an act of interference from outside the system when God the creator sent his only begotten Son to die on the cross and to be risen on the third day. Among many other supernatural acts.
In other words, if the Bible is true then the so called boundary between the natural and the supernatural is temporary at best and imaginary at worst.
As for your asserted need for me to teach children... well, I am not a young man, and way-back in the day did raise a large family, certainly large by today's standards.
So am not totally unfamiliar with children, or the raising & teaching thereof.
I know that children's learning needs are pretty basic, and that only with age & experience comes serious questioning -- "what I've seen versus what I was taught".
And those are just the issues I enjoy addressing here... :-)
Finally, there is the matter of... let me call it "intellectual age of consent", referring to the fact that young children should only be taught what their parents want them to learn.
Any search for "higher understandings" really needs to come from young adults, when "age appropriate", in a form and at a pace of their own choosing.
So let me put it this way: children should not be thrown into an intellectual lion's den, before they are properly equipped & trained to tame the lions... ;-)
Of course the Bible is the "true word of God", spoken to and recorded by prophets of old, for the benefit of people who were 95+% illiterate, and utterly unfamiliar with science as we know it today.
Did you expect that God would reveal the secrets of relativity (i.e., E=MC2) to Moses from a burning bush?!
Moses had other immediate existential concerns, and would not have benefitted from such equations.
So, relativity would wait for one of Moses' descendants, at a time in history when such equations could become part of the answer to another existential problem: the Holocaust.
reasonisfaith: "But if the opposite premise is true, then every one of us already has innate knowledge of God and therefore belief in God is at least equally if not more valid than belief in the blue sky."
Since the age of Adam, awareness of God has been essential to human psyche, indeed, defining what we mean by the term "fully human".
I say this despite the obvious fact that growing numbers now claim to be atheists -- the truth is they simply refuse to properly identify and name their real gods, "gods" which if fully known would be as frightful as any from ancient history.
Point is: humans all serve some form of God, or gods, it's built into our DNA, so to speak.
But God was usually considered a spirit, giving us a significant difference between, for example, our knowledge of "blue sky" and our awareness of God.
The distinction here is important to understand and maintain, because the entire scientific enterprise is based on it: "blue sky" comes from the natural realm, and can be studied with natural-sciences, using all the measuring tools & ideas at our disposal.
By contrast, God is super-natural, spiritual, and requires from us a very different approach, one which for thousands of years now has been taught in churches and temples.
Bottom line: it is useless and unnecessary to pit science against religion.
Properly understood, they are not in conflict and can indeed be shown to fully support each other, imho.
I'll say it again: that is a lie, it is a Big Lie, and if you keep repeating it, will make you a Big Liar -- so you must stop with that.
Again, the truth here is simple to see, if you just remember that our word "science" comes to us from our Founding Fathers' Age of Enlightenment term "natural-sciences", which for them in no-way, shape or form implied atheism.
They were all at least deists, and most devout Christians, who looked on their "natural science" as a method for learning how God created and runs the Universe.
Their understanding today goes by the term "methodological naturalism" and it is not, never was, never will be: atheism.
After our Founders' Age of Enlightenment came other ages -- darker, more wicked ages -- which go by names like "Romantic", "Modern" and "post Modern", each retreating further and further from acknowledging God's role in science and their own lives.
And so, what began as our Founders' "methodological naturalism" eventually morphed into atheism under names like: "philosophical naturalism", "metaphysical naturalism" and "ontological naturalism".
What's most important to comprehend is that these new terms are not scientific terms, instead they are effectively religious terms describing the religion of atheism.
So please, I beg you: do not conflate & confuse the methodology of our Founders' "natural-sciences" with the atheism in today's "metaphysical naturalism".
I promise: you don't have to lie to tell the truth about your religion.
reasonisfaith: "In other words, if the Bible is true then the so called boundary between the natural and the supernatural is temporary at best and imaginary at worst."
Imaginary, temporary or otherwise, doesn't matter for purposes of scientific inquiry.
Natural-science is simply our agreement to ignore for scientific purposes all except natural causes for natural processes.
This allows scientist of all (or no) religious beliefs to work together on projects and prevents their results from intruding on theological issues.
That atheists have used this agreement to assert: "only the natural-realm exists", is unfortunate, but we don't have to agree with that to support natural-science.
Not if you're a wolf..................
And overcome entropy.
The missing piece of the puzzle here is that even though naturalism might not claim to be able to explain everything—as you seem to be asserting with regard to methodological naturalism—naturalism induces a sort of unconscious acceptance of this claim. (For some people—namely atheists—it becomes a conscious acceptance.)
As a result, the common assumption in our society is that all phenomena necessarily have a “scientific explanation.”
Anyway, as I was saying. Naturalism has never come close to providing an explanation for consciousness or self. You can put energy on the list, too.
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