Posted on 11/04/2001 10:27:45 AM PST by Sungirl
I'd like to ask this question to Freepers to get some answers. A friend of mine will often say she doesn't believe in God....but, I think she is fishing for a reason TO believe. Today she sent me a note from her other friend who states the theory of evolution and that people who believe God put us here are 'brainwashed'. She tells her.... 'Evolution has PROOF...where is the Proof of God?'
Personally, I think evolution has made man evolve....but I also think that the earth and all its resources are not here without a reason and a purpose. There are just too many coincidences to think that it is not planned. Just my thought.
No. He is the WEAKEST link! Goodbye!
That is a ridiculous logical fallacy precisely because there is an infinite number of explanations just as plausible as yours. One does not have to look any farther than some of the fruitcake religions to find some explanations that are different yet just as plausible. Just because you believe your explanation doesn't make it any more plausible, because the evidentiary base is identical. I would even go as far as to say that some of the "out there" explanations are MORE plausible than yours (e.g. living in a simulation scenarios) because they are more consistent with existing knowledge and are just as explanatory (Occam's razor).
Actually, this is not how it is done scientifically. They actually make detailed profiles of brain state, develop causal and analytical models, using scanning and computer technology. All this with input from the person they are scanning, of course. This has allowed a much greater understanding of what actually are the mechanisms and processes involved in emotion, rather than fuzzy semantics, to the extent that they could actually tell you what you what you are feeling at the moment if they hooked you up to a brain scanner.
Of course, the same technology is behind some of the experimental brain scanning "truth machines". Even though people lie, some very convincingly, it is relatively easy to identify a lie with brain imaging techniques. Unlike the polygraph, which sometimes fails because it is only measuring secondary effects, brain scanning technologies go straight to the source and the brain is a veritable "red light, green light" when people are lying.
Proof of evolution? Like that chicken bone glued to a dinosaur by the national geographic? THat's called evolution of liberal thinking all right.
Make the difference between evolution and natural selection. Natural selection is useful to science and nature, but it is not the only cause of things, it is a particular of nature. Evolution purports itself to be an end all be all god.
This has for consequence that if evolutionists are right, then we should submit ourselves to the attrocious rules of evolution (genocide, meteorites, accelerated conceptions and destruction of the unfit etc,) to make advances for the human race.
The key to prove the existence of God is in the difference between material blessings and material enslavement. Hence, if evolution is not god, then that means that using some of its theories of natural selection in a blessing mindset to, say, improve airplane airfoils, would be perfectly legitimate. However to use this as a mean to which one should be enslaved to is really asking for death and slavery.
Essentialy liberals do not understand that the religious have no particular objection to evolution as a blessing occurence, but they have a problem with using it as a mean to which we should enslave feotuses and other less fortunate.
Liberals go way too far in making it an end all be all rule. In fact they are using some of the blessings of natural selection to impose their social means of doing things, which is a distortion of the usage of science for dogmatic political means as opposed of using politics to balance the powers and sciences there are out there, under God.
Luke 17:30, "Even thus shall it be IN THE DAY when the son of man is revealed. (vs 31) IN THAT DAY . . . (vs 34) I tell you, IN THAT NIGHT . . . " Nobody in Luke's day thought it could be day and night at the same time! They thought the earth was flat! Luke was written around 65 A.D. How did Luke know something that the scientists didn't know until the 16th century?
Isaiah 40:22, "It is he that sitteth upon the CIRCLE OF THE EARTH." How did Isaiah know in 700 B.C. the earth is round? The scientists of Isaiah's day thought the earth was flat. They didn't discover the earth is round until the early 1500s when Magellan sailed around the world. How did Isaiah know something over 2000 years ahead of science?
Job 26:7, ". . . and hangeth the earth upon NOTHING." During the time of Job, it was believed a god named Atlas held the earth on his shoulders! Nobody believed the earth "hangeth upon NOTHING!" Job is the oldest book in the Bible! Written over 3500 years ago! How did Job know something that was IMPOSSIBLE to know during his day?
Genesis 2:7, "And the Lord God formed man of the DUST OF THE GROUND, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul." Surely, you don't take Genesis 2:7 seriously? Do you? November 1982, Reader's Digest had an article titled How Life on Earth Began. It stated that according to scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center the ingredients needed to form a human being can be found IN CLAY. The article said, "The Biblical scenario for the creation of life turns out to be NOT FAR OFF THE MARK."(Reader's Digest, November, 1982 p.116) No, it's "not far off the mark" - it's right on it! Scientists have laughed at the possibility of Genesis having any scientific credibility whatsoever - and yet, the more we learn, the more we find it to be SCIENTIFICALLY CORRECT!
Now could man have written this amazing book without God. Not on your life.
Becky
Nature doesn't "design" anything. Random variations that have survival or reproductive value tend to produce more of their own kind. Hence how nature can standardize on an interesting aberration.
As for the maple seeds, there are many species of tree that produce similar leafy seeds. Some have highly evolved seeds, like the maple, and others have much cruder and less efficient variations of the same thing. In fact, you can find a continuum ranging from the airfoil of the maple to simple drag chutes for dispersal.
You are correct, but somewhat missing the point. Once you can measure "love" and categorize different variations of it in an objective manner, you can start studying causality and a ton of other interesting features of the phenomenon. It creates a real-world scientific metric for studying "love" in all its dimensions, including cases where "love" creates pathological conditions.
Otherwise, discussions of such things reduce to arguments of semantics, lacking objective definitions and metrics of such things. A good example of the problems caused by only having semantics is the usage of terms such as "rape", which the feminazis throw around willy-nilly. Establishing definitions and metrics that are decoupled from the semantics and emotional baggage force discussions to be rigorous and rational in ways that would be impossible otherwise. This is a good thing in my opinion, because it allows us to decisively refute some of the fuzzyheaded arguments from the leftists, feminazis, and similar. Emotional arguments are the last bastion of left-wing morons; if we take that away from them, they have nothing left.
He suggests the universe was designed the way it is TO TEACH US THE LESSONS IT HOLDS.
I agree, but like all things this is neither good nor evil. It is just a tool and will reflect the intent of the people using it. Fact is though, scientists usually don't tell anyone anything. Usually it is someone in the government that decides to tell people what to do, based on something he once read by some "scientist" (a dubious credential in many cases), and in some cases not even with that much credibility. Real scientists just do science and report results.
One of the first Laws of true Science is that "Where there is a design, there must be a designer." That is, random selection will never, in thousands out of thousands of examples, continue to repeat the same precise design.
If Darwin's theory concerning "Survival of the fittest" was anything more than a clever theory, the predators might have randomly developed with stereo-binocular vision, but prey would have likely "evolved" with eyes and ears all around their head... the better with which to elude predation.
However, what we see in the world are:
all Birds...
all Reptiles...
all Amphibians...
all Mamals...
even Fish...
...designed with two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, and a mouth, all on their face. Thousands of species from different classes, families and and genuses...
all sharing an identical design.
Where there is a design, there is a designer.
Honor Him, for He is Almighty God. Amen.
I described the mechanism, though maybe not all too clearly. In a nutshell, the design mechanism is negative feedback (natural selection), with the tolerance spec being effective reproduction. The process is fed with the vast quantity of chaos and energy ultimately supplied by the sun for the most part.
Note that this is a very good design process for extremely complex systems, and as human engineering gets more complicated, we rely on this type of design process more and more. You let a system randomly interact with itself and apply a filter to the results that looks for stable forms. Most of the stuff a chaotic system generates is utter crap or mediocre at best, but it occasionally generates truly useful and interesting designs purely by chance. High performance mechanical systems are frequently designed this way; I know for a fact that recent generation hard drives are. You may wonder how modern hard drive designs emerged by filtering chaos, because it seems improbable, but it does work and it turns out to be a more efficient design process in many cases than "traditional" engineering.
1. Something is theorized.
2. Quantitative/qualitative evidence is given to back up the theory.
3. Other scientists spend their entire lives trying to prove the theory false.
4. Over many years, if the theory stands, it becomes law (ie-Newton's Laws of motion).
Evolution has passed the test thus far (no one has proven it false).
Under scientific principles, no one can PROVE or DISPROVE anything about God (due to the lack of qualitative and quantitative evidence).
It is better to separate science and theology. Many of us biologists DO believe in God, many do not.
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