Posted on 07/05/2002 12:26:31 PM PDT by Khepera
What is the problem with evolutionists referring to "Mother Nature?"
I've got tons of fishing magazines at home; they're laying everywhere. This one is entitled In-Fisherman and it is one of the best fishing magazines around. It's very helpful in educating you about fishing--fresh-water fishing in particular. But they have these short sections in the beginning--snippets, side-bar type things. This one is entitled "New View of Eye-Spots." It talks about how they are reassessing why these creatures have eye-spots. The purpose for eye-spots, according to evolutionary theory, is to trick the larger fish into attacking the eye-spot and away from the vulnerable spot on the fish in order to give the shad a chance to get away. But now there's a case of a shad, which is a small bait fish that larger fish eat, that has an eye-spot right in the middle of its body, which seems to be the most vulnerable spot. Why would they have an eye-spot there if the purpose of an eye-spot is to provide a protective advantage for the shad?
There's a comment made in the article, "The spots on the sides of shad may have evolved as a way to help the species maintain formation while schooling or spawning and not for defense against predators." Here's another case where you have the evolution language mixed with design language. It "may have evolved as a way to help." In other words, there is a purpose for this and that's to help schooling fish. It's so interesting when one explanation based on evolution doesn't work and they try to come up with another explanation, but both of these explanations imply design and purpose.
I then began reading a book called Big Bass Magic . This author is quite a conservationist, and I'm glad for that. He advocates catch and release, which is big among bass fishermen because we catch our fish for the sport of it and then let them go unharmed. Of course, then they can return to their natural habitat, spawn and enjoy a long life there and maybe be caught again, so we have a resource that is maintained.
The author writes this unusual paragraph. Listen carefully to the words: "Generally, today's fish management has its roots in the agencies and programs of the forties. The purpose at that time was to determine how to exploit what was considered the lavishly over-abundant fish resource."
Let me pause for a moment. He used the word "purpose." Who has the purpose? Fish management people, right? "The purpose at the time was to determine how to better exploit what was considered the lavishly over-abundant fish resource."
He continues, "We often still find that attitude in fish management today, and it is typified by the much publicized statement that any fish that grows up, dies of old age and is never caught is a wasted resource. Well, that presumes that in nature no purpose is served by the complete life of that fish, and it is too much for me to take when that is denied. Nature would not allow a bass, for instance, to reach ten pounds if a bass that size served no purpose in the balance of the ecosystem."
If you are an evolutionist, you are not a theist in the sense that your theism has anything to do with the real world.
He's saying, look, older bass, bigger bass, the ones that people catch and hang on their wall really serve a purpose in the ecosystem. Notice how he used the word purpose to describe the intent of fishery management and then he used the word purpose to describe the intent of nature. Now, what the heck is that? Nature is not a person, therefore nature cannot have intent. Only agents have intents. Nature doesn't. Nature is just a general way of describing the accident of cause and effect in a naturalistic system. So to say that nature has a purpose that is served by the complete life of the fish in the ecosystem is to say something that is nonsense. It's ironic that it is said so glibly without a blush by a man who is deeply committed to evolution.
Now, I think that his gut-level observation is accurate. I think it seems clear that there is some purpose for the full life span of different species, but we can only make a comment like that if there is someone behind the scenes that is purposing, such that the things that we see have purposes. I think it is obvious there is a designer and that's why it is very easy for this man to talk about the purpose of individuals in wildlife management in the same breath as talking about the purpose of nature. It appears that both nature and wildlife management individuals are people that purpose. I think he is right, but nature is not like a mother nature that is to be worshipped. What we call nature is really the purposes of God. It is so obvious that even this evolutionist can't speak in such a way as to avoid that conclusion, which goes to make another point.
If you are an evolutionist, you are not a theist in the sense that your theism has anything to do with the real world. If you want to believe in God and believe in evolution, fine, go ahead and do that, but don't act like your belief in God has anything to do with the real world. It doesn't. Your belief about the real world is evolution, and that means time and chance. If you believe that God has something to do with the real world, then you can't be an evolutionist because evolution is run by chance, not by God, by definition.
Secondly, if you are an evolutionist, then please be honest with yourself and everyone else and abandon this Mother Nature language and all of this purpose talk that you invariably allow to be smuggled into your language when talking about the natural realm. You are rationally obliged, if you want to be intellectually honest, to refer to the rest of the time/space continuum world in entirely chance terms. No more Mother Nature language. No more purpose language. No more design language. Nothing.
I think if you consistently talk in a way that fits your basic world view you will see how ridiculous that world ends up being. It becomes untenable. It can't be held because the world is obviously designed. Things obviously fit into ecosystems with a particular purpose. They obviously have their place. Bodies are obviously artifacts. Mouths were made for eating. Hands were made for grasping. Legs were made for walking. They don't just happen to do that because they accidentally formed that way through the forces of nature acting on mindless matter. That, by the way, is the thing that gives human beings purpose. Not only are their bodies purposeful but their lives are purposeful as well.
Why? There is an intelligent Creator who is behind everything. A Creator we see quite obviously, as Paul says in the book of Romans, and as you say consistently every time you use the words Mother Nature.
While we're on the subject of evidence... Is there any evidence of Bertrand Russell having ever been anything other than a sort of an ignorant jerk? Is there anything the guy ever did which has any sort of a positive influence on anybody's life in 2002?
I mean, I look at the kinds of quotes you seem to like and I look at some of what you see on the internet, and all I really see is a sort of a wasted life.
What I mean is that people with supposedly brilliant minds are supposed to do more with them than that. Take Henry Ford, for instance: every time I drive to Richmond or New York, I can easily imagine how hard it wuold be to walk those distances. Or take Alexander Pushkin; millions of people still read his poetry 170 years after his times. Or even John Lennon; people still enjoy Beatles music all over the world.
Nobody has to ask what the great musicians have done for humanity or what any of your great inventors have done for humanity, or what people like Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt have done for humanity.
But what did Bertrand Russel ever do for humanity? Is there really anything in modern mathematics which wouldn't work without some contribution of his? Like I say, from everything I've ever been able to read, the guy was just an ignorant jerk.
Many Experts Quoted on FUBAR State of Evolution
"If a person doesn't think that there is a God to be accountable to, then what's the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That's how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all came from slime. When we died, you know , that was it, there is nothing..."
Jeffrey Dahmer, noted Evolutionist
Given standard theories wrt the history of our solar system and our own planet, nobody should be finding cities and villages on Mars, 2100 feet beneath the waves off Cuba, or buried under two miles of Antarctic ice.
Ancient religious practices mainly amounted to attempts to communicate with the spirit world directly via oracles, prophets, divination etc. and electrical gadgetry such as the ark of the covenant and the pyramids, and all that kind of stuff had stopped working just prior to Christian times.
12. Would you be interested, if I showed you from the Bible, how to have your sins forgiven and how to know for sure that you are going to Heaven? If so, tell me
Part of the appeal of religion isn't it (this going to heaven business)? I'd sure like to go to a place where I can see my dead relatives and sip tea with them while nibbling on crumpets. Cute idea, religion is. Man made for man's comfort.
mommy!
If you claim that God made man in his image does that mean that God is a hateful, violent, spiteful, idiotic, blinkered, narrow-minded, moronic fool who doesn't actually have a clue as to what's going to happen one minute to the next?
That's personal opinion. I could as well ask what's the evidence that you (or Velikovsky for that matter) ever have been anything other than a sort of an ignorant jerk.
...and all I really see is a sort of a wasted life.
And something like this is coming from you. Oh, the irony ;-D
But that's not all. The best thing is you can watch your other relatives who didn't make it to heaven roast in hell while sipping tea and nibbling on crumpets. Isn't this great?
In fact, it is a Bibically literal claim that God created man in his own image. Man has at least three dimensions (and time as the fourth.) So those who claim that God created space and time are at odds with the literal Bible -- for God's image must have already had all these dimensions (and possibly more.)
I think this is one of the "literal" parts of the Bible that most "literalists" decide is NOT literal. They get to pick and choose. Very convenient.
I bring up the issue(s) only to demonstrate how utterly vacuous the "Hitler believed in evolution, therefore evolution is evil" formulation is.
The same goes for the matter of the Pope. I'm illustrating the false dichotomy you persist in using: "Evolution or God."
True. Until just a few days ago, I was unaware that the Nazis used it. I had thought the formulation had ended with World War I.
That "Gott mit uns" predates the Nazis actually helps illustrate my point. The theory of evolution predates the Nazis, too. The Nazis managed to pervert both.
Ha, you merely prove that science truly is the work of Satan!
I got rid of my model trains after I found out the fascist Mussolini made the trains run on time.
My model trains run on electricity.
A/K/A the reductio ad Hitlerum - anything that Hitler agreed with or engaged in is necessarily evil.
Now that I think about it, I'm fairly sure that Hitler ate food and wore clothes. Therefore, food and clothing are evil. I demand that you prove your righteousness by nakedly starving to death...
Looks like some people are on their way to satisfying your request. Their agenda is really exposed in post 14, by the way.
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