But there is plenty of good science fiction that explores the idea of life being engineered by a super intelligent race of aliens. One of my favorite is Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke, published in 1953:
Posted on 04/07/2008 2:25:19 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
THE scientist who led the team that cracked the human genome is to publish a book explaining why he now believes in the existence of God and is convinced that miracles are real.
Francis Collins, the director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute, claims there is a rational basis for a creator and that scientific discoveries bring man “closer to God”.
His book, The Language of God, to be published in September, will reopen the age-old debate about the relationship between science and faith. “One of the great tragedies of our time is this impression that has been created that science and religion have to be at war,” said Collins, 56.
“I don’t see that as necessary at all and I think it is deeply disappointing that the shrill voices that occupy the extremes of this spectrum have dominated the stage for the past 20 years.”
For Collins, unravelling the human genome did not create a conflict in his mind. Instead, it allowed him to “glimpse at the workings of God”.
“When you make a breakthrough it is a moment of scientific exhilaration because you have been on this search and seem to have found it,” he said. “But it is also a moment where I at least feel closeness to the creator in the sense of having now perceived something that no human knew before but God knew all along.
“When you have for the first time in front of you this 3.1 billion-letter instruction book that conveys all kinds of information and all kinds of mystery about humankind, you can’t survey that going through page after page without a sense of awe. I can’t help but look at those pages and have a vague sense that this is giving me a glimpse of God’s mind.”
Collins joins a line of scientists whose research deepened their belief in God. Isaac Newton, whose discovery of the laws of gravity reshaped our understanding of the universe, said: “This most beautiful system could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.”
Although Einstein revolutionised our thinking about time, gravity and the conversion of matter to energy, he believed the universe had a creator. “I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details,” he said. However Galileo was famously questioned by the inquisition and put on trial in 1633 for the “heresy” of claiming that the earth moved around the sun.
Among Collins’s most controversial beliefs is that of “theistic evolution”, which claims natural selection is the tool that God chose to create man. In his version of the theory, he argues that man will not evolve further.
“I see God’s hand at work through the mechanism of evolution. If God chose to create human beings in his image and decided that the mechanism of evolution was an elegant way to accomplish that goal, who are we to say that is not the way,” he says.
“Scientifically, the forces of evolution by natural selection have been profoundly affected for humankind by the changes in culture and environment and the expansion of the human species to 6 billion members. So what you see is pretty much what you get.”
Collins was an atheist until the age of 27, when as a young doctor he was impressed by the strength that faith gave to some of his most critical patients.
“They had terrible diseases from which they were probably not going to escape, and yet instead of railing at God they seemed to lean on their faith as a source of great comfort and reassurance,” he said. “That was interesting, puzzling and unsettling.”
He decided to visit a Methodist minister and was given a copy of C S Lewis’s Mere Christianity, which argues that God is a rational possibility. The book transformed his life. “It was an argument I was not prepared to hear,” he said. “I was very happy with the idea that God didn’t exist, and had no interest in me. And yet at the same time, I could not turn away.”
His epiphany came when he went hiking through the Cascade Mountains in Washington state. He said: “It was a beautiful afternoon and suddenly the remarkable beauty of creation around me was so overwhelming, I felt, ‘I cannot resist this another moment’.”
Collins believes that science cannot be used to refute the existence of God because it is confined to the “natural” world. In this light he believes miracles are a real possibility. “If one is willing to accept the existence of God or some supernatural force outside nature then it is not a logical problem to admit that, occasionally, a supernatural force might stage an invasion,” he says.
“Either it’s all true, or you just might as well toss the whole thing out because you can never be sure what’s correct or not.”
OK, lets apply that little gem of reasoning to science: We KNOW its not all true, esp. physics. Eve stuff we have been pretty sure about for centuries gets updated/changed as new info. comes in. For example, Newton’s Second Law (F=ma) was pretty settled, but under Modified Theory - a relatively new update - it may be wrong for certain small a’s (has to do with how galaxies may hold together). So, using your reasoning, guess we’d better “toss the whole thing (science) out.”
This article was written in 2006, so I assume his book is already available.
Who says evolution is random? Biologists don't claim so.
You might look up the word "selection", as in "natural selection".
That's why I "tossed the whole thing out". Couldn't figure out which parts of the Bible were true and which parts weren't, and since a 6000 year old universe is delusional. Well...
Don’t condescend. Atheists/Evolutionists tend to be a bit smug and assume that their theories haven’t been studied by their detractors.
Yes, random mutations with survival pressures. Unfortunately, there is no way INFORMATION such as is encoded in DNA could have “evolved” by this process.
When there is no survival value to any sub-mutation, the “selection” process does NOTHING to cause this sub-mutation to pass on. In other words, it ALL had to be there at once to add any survival value, and the odds are prohibitive of such things happening in many examples (and Darwin himself said that any ONE example would refute his theory).
Well said. I used to argue exactly those points. But give it up. They'll never believe you, and you'll drive yourself crazy trying to point out the obvious to them. Or you will finally accept their argument, as I did, and reject God entirely.
Everyone finds God. Those with faith find him near. Those without find Him across the uncrossable chasm, and just a tad too late.
Someone who had studied evolution wouldn't label it "random".
Yes, random mutations with survival pressures.
Translation: Non Random.
When there is no survival value to any sub-mutation, the “selection” process does NOTHING to cause this sub-mutation to pass on.
That's right. But when there *is* a survival value the selection process does contribute to passing on the mutation because the critter survies to reproduce, and thus information is accumulated.
kewl
Thank you!
But when there *is* a survival value the selection process does contribute to passing on the mutation because the critter survies to reproduce, and thus information is accumulated.
No. I cannot be "accumulated" if there is no survival value of the sub RANDOM mutations. Yes, the mutations ARE random (again, knock off the pedantry - all discussions of natural selection speak of random mutations coupled to natural selection), and theoretically, those that provide some sort of advantage will be passed on.
However, a NON-WORKING PARTIAL FLAGELLUM will not be passed on, because it offers NO advantage, and is probably a disadvantage. On the other side, a fully working flagellum does provide advantage, but is not possible in its entirety through slight mutations. "Slight mutations" is the exact wording of Darwin.
Again, Darwin himself stated that if any structure was not possible through slight, random mutations that offer incremental survival value, then his theory would be disproved.
I hope you found your way back.
Where in the Bible does it say that the earth is 6,000 years old? I never found the chapter and verse for that.
Do you know where that came from initially?
That's an awful lot of 'natural selection','random' and 'chance'.
My point is this: once you start talking about an entity that created humans and the Earth, you are conceding that that entity is “supernatural”-—super = above + natural = the natural laws of “science”.
Generally, a supernatural entity would be defined as a “god,” in the sense of being more powerful, more intelligent, etc. than its own creation. (So I’m not talking about a “god” as something that must be worshipped and all that.)
Once the existence of a god is conceded, then you have to grapple with whether god constitutes “God,” that is, not only a supernatural entity, but a supernatural entity that has moral authority over the destiny of its creation and the ability to “steer” its creation according to its will.
It seems to me that by saying maybe we were created by “aliens,” you are conceding the existence of a supernatural entity-—a god or gods.
That being the case, it seems to me that you actually are disagreeing with the author’s conclusion that the supernatural entity that created humans and the Earth and all that is in it is “God”-—i.e., a supernatural entity with moral authority.
I’ve often found that people who deny the existence of God do so because, at bottom, they reject-—or at least want to avoid grappling with-—the possibility that a supernatural entity with not more power (the power to create something from nothing), but superior moral authority exists. And, therefore, might subject its creation to moral judgment.
IOW, the sticking point that motivates many of those who reject the existence of God actually is not about whether God created creation, but about the fact that such a creator would (or at least might have) the power and desire to impose moral judgment on them.
If a person does not want to be judged for how he lives his life, one way to “convince” oneself that he can live as he pleases without anything other than “natural” (as opposed to supernatural/eternal) consequences, is to reject the existence of the Judge in the first place.
So, you see, by conceding that a supernatural entity might have created humans and the Earth, you still end up having to grapple with the existence of God and his authority.
I appreciate your pointing this out and expanding on this subject. However, there is either a principle or science has observed in Quantum Physics a thing being in two places at once. I think I learned about this from the movie, "What The Bleep Do We Know, Down The Rabbit Hole." I could have interpreted this information wrong, but I believe I understood what the scientist was indicating.
What sticks out the most in my mind is Jeffrey Satinover, MD. who made this statement relayed, "We don't see a part of a particle in two different places, but we see THE particle in two different places."
Now, I remember this because the statement simple blew me away. And he was trying to explain it so people would definately understand, "a thing was in two places at once, not "part" of the same thing."
I don't know. DNA is Code, and code can be written to adapt. Even our lowly infantile AI computer code and neural nets can learn and adapt.
Think maybe the Big Guy didn't want to be bothered with the minute by minute, day by day details and wrote adaptation into the system?
Hey,you speak from experience,I see.
The funny thing was that I had always been a believer but let the wicked ways of the world guide me because of the need to be accepted.Looking back,even most of my vices did not bring my anything but fleeting temporary joy.
Now I feel pretty much alone in the world but know that as long as I have God in my life I am truly free.
Is there something about the word "is" that you don't understand? I even put asterisks around it so it would stick out.
When there are survival values, information is therefore accumulated.
I believe I said in the previous post that you were correct in cases with no survival values. You are merely restating what I've already acknowledged.
Yes, the mutations ARE random
Yes. Again your are correct. But again you ignore that evolution doesn't end at that point, which is where natural selection begins and randomness ends.
However, a NON-WORKING PARTIAL FLAGELLUM will not be passed on
Again, you are correct. But Behe's argument only holds if the structure is required as a flagellum. There have already been several other useful features discovered for sub-structures of the flagellum. This is as evolution theory would predict, and as predicted those intermediate structures have been found. The irreducible complexity hypothesis has been defeated.
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