Posted on 09/16/2009 3:29:20 AM PDT by Ethan Clive Osgoode
Steve: You're doing really interesting work. You've decoupled sort of, "Is evolution true?", you know, "What are problems with evolution?", from people's interpretations of whether or not they accept evolution. Regardless of evolution itself, we're just talking about the psychological profiles of how you come to either accept or not accept evolution. Some of that work is yours and some of it you're very well familiar with from other people; so let's talk about some of the basics and some of the surprises about the people who accept and don't accept evolution and their reasons for it.
Lombrozo: Sure. So I think one of the most surprising findings has to do with the relationship between understanding the basics of evolutionary theory and accepting it as our best account of the origins of human life. So most people, I think, [or] in particular scientists, tend to think that if people reject evolution and in particular evolution by natural selection, it's because they don't understand it very well; they don't really understand what the theory is telling us. But in fact, if you look at the data from psychology and education, what you find is either no correlation between accepting evolution and understanding it or very, very small correlation between those two factors, and I think that's surprising to a lot of people and in particular to educators and scientists.
Steve: Yeah, it was surprising to me when your data were presented. So what [does] that mean for, you know, education in the country? What should people be thinking about if they have a desire to have evolutionary theory be more accepted by more people?
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...
Indeed, dearest sister in Christ!
But if a man does that, what he winds up with is not God, but merely an idol in glorification to himself. (Which seems to have been Spinoza's main takeaway from his efforts along these lines ... but further explication of this point will have to wait for another time.) Therein lies perdition. In such a decision, man freely chooses his fate, constructs his own eternal Hell while still living....
Somehow I imagine that Isaac Newton, although a heretic by Christian standards, managed to escape this fate of self-constructed eternal Hell. (Heaven already knows I sincerely hope and pray so.) Newton was a monotheist, and espoused the concept of God Pantocrator. That is, of God not only as Creator, but as absolute ruler of the universe in every moment of time in space, Who has to constantly intercede to make necessary "course corrections" occasioned by the very operation of the mechanical laws.... Which Newton felt could only accrete increasing disorder over time, unless God were to step in as needed to restore and correct His created order.
It seems a strange way to think about God. But evidently, this was Newton's basic view.
And yet this "God-addled" person articulated the most sublime account of the mechanics of material bodies on any and every scale, from subatomic particles to the cosmos itself — which still stands as the best description we have of the behavior of massive bodies (of whatever size) within the perspective of four-dimensional physics.
The only problem with Newtonian mechanics nowadays is that it does not seem terribly helpful when the scientific problem is biological, not merely physical. The expectation of the past 400 years is that Newtonian mechanics is absolutely universal. Yet the fact seems to be that it is only universal with respect to material bodies, not living organisms (which are "material bodies" PLUS the "something else" which makes them living). With respect to living organisms, Newtonian mechanics has no real purchase at all.
Whatever. In any case, it's soooooooooo good to be back again! I really missed you guys!
Thank you ever so much, dearest sister in Christ, for your outstanding essay/post!
I have no idea whether God created linear space ahead of multiple spatial dimensions or linear time ahead of multiple temporal dimensions (if there are more than one.)
However, if He created multiple expanded (as contrasted to compactified or Kaluza/Klein) dimensions of time - then it would follow that past, present and future exist concurrently.
As you say, we are not aware of the present, only the past due to the time lag between perception and cognition. So depending on the number and types of dimensions (which are both unknown and unknowable) we may be traveling towards a future that already exists.
To an outside observer, that scenario would be as if we are living actors in a movie he is watching. To God, the entire movie would be observed at once.
One might think such a structure would preclude free will, but that is not necessarily so because the designer, God, could also have built in freedom of movement with limitations. Or to put it another way, His will could not be thwarted even though He allowed the actors to have self-will.
No. The physics is what supports reality. God is a being that exists in that reality.
"at the end of the day, the acceptance of this completely rationalized God only serves to deracinate human experience, which is based on faith at least as much as on reason, if not more."
God is real, and is a perrson, not a rationalization. Keep in mind that He is a person and came here specifically to teach who He was. He did that by becoming human. Faith is beleiving what someone says through reason and decision, w/o the hard evidence that would provide certainty. God made choices as a human in this world(human experience) to be true to Himself, generating the identical personality and holdings of the Father, which are identified as and in the person of the Holy Spirit. That Person is who is to be known, not some rationalization, or other person, or thing.
I'm very much looking forward to hearing more about Spinoza, too.
And of course I very strongly agree with you, dearest sister in Christ, that biological systems are unique in that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And organization and information (successful communication) are key to understanding it.
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I suppose that I may admit to a minor form of Newton's "Pantocreator" viewpoint: I believe that our Creator established the laws of physics as a part of his overall design, set things in motion, and allowed them to proceed accordingly. However, I suspect that He keeps things in order and proceeding according to His plan by the exertion of subtle, and mostly undetectable, corrective actions. (We scientists describe such actions via the esoteric and technical term, "tweaks"...) LOL!
Chaos theory describes such effects by analogies -- such as the cascading effects of the flap of a butterfly's wing in some remote place eventually causing a profound effect elsewhere. IOW, if He does guide by intrusion, His actions are imperceptibly subtle -- and, when He does intercede to the extent of violating His physical laws ...we call that a "miracle"...
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FWIW, as a scientist, I probably would not be as accepting of the possibility of divine intrusion and intervention in the physical realm -- were it not for the profound experience of having experienced His guiding hand in my own life -- many times!
Since, apparently, there is no correlation between understanding darwinism and believing in it, the only ways to make converts to Darwinism would be brainwashing, threats, propaganda etc. Which is of course how it is today.
Actually, we haveevidence that at least two’phases’ of time exist because of our position within one by which we receive data from another ... from our position in present we discern the data arriving from past.
God is real, and is a perrson, not a rationalization. Keep in mind that He is a person and came here specifically to teach who He was. He did that by becoming human. Faith is beleiving what someone says through reason and decision, w/o the hard evidence that would provide certainty. God made choices as a human in this world(human experience) to be true to Himself, generating the identical personality and holdings of the Father, which are identified as and in the person of the Holy Spirit. That Person is who is to be known, not some rationalization, or other person, or thing.
By your testimony, God is subordinate to (exists within) “what is” which you call reality.
Your testimony here and previously at post 74 is much like that of the LDS, that each god is a created spiritual being in a pre-mortal existence, the offspring of prior father-gods in an eternity past; that enfleshed as man also can become an equivalent god over his own domain and so continuing into eternity future. In this belief, god may be “a” creator of a universe but not “The” Creator of “all that there is” whether spiritual or physical. And he is subordinate to “what is” which is comparable to your testimony of reality.
It is my testimony that that belief denies God is “The” Creator; it denies that His Name is I AM and Alpha and Omega.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. – Genesis 1:1
Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. – Revelation 4:11
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. – Revelation 1:8
And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. – Revelation 20:11
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. – Revelation 21:1
And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. – Exodus 3:14
Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. – John 8:58
As soon then as he had said unto them, I am [he], they went backward, and fell to the ground. – John 18:6
Even so, as my dearest sister in Christ has said, I am glad that you are theist!
Emphasis mine:
Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee.
Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.
Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.
Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, [which is] new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and [I will write upon him] my new name.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. – Revelation 3:7-13
The reason we, His adopted children, will inherit the new heaven and earth has nothing to do with who we are but everything to do with Who God IS.
Oh my, but I too, have felt that guiding hand in my life. So I have no doubt whatever that God can act within the physical realm of created nature (of which I am a part) if He so wills it. In short, He has "tweaked" me, more than a few times. On at least one occasion, He may have saved my life.
Newton called his God Pantocrator (which means "ruler of all that there is") "the Lord of Life with His creatures." He presumably is not in the world of His Creation, but ineffably interfaces with it, at Will, via what Newton called the sensorium Dei. This sensorium suggests to my mind a sort of universal field that mediates divine Presence.
But then again, God doesn't need anything like a field to facilitate His acts. Or so it seems to me. Yet perhaps Newton, being a scientist, simply needed to think and speak in such terms.
It's great to see you, TXnMA! Thank you so very much for writing!
But if one expands his concept of temporal dimensionality beyond the linear - or as a descriptor which expresses only an arrow of time - then certainly there is no reason the same phenomena would not apply to time.
And to that I would add that we know of spatial and temporal dimensions due to our sensory perception and reasoning. But we are not necessarily able to detect all spatial and temporal dimensions. Also there could be other types of dimensions that we are unable to detect either directly or indirectly.
That is true also of particles and fields. If the particle or field has no perceptible direct or indirect effect, we would not be able to detect it. At the same time, we cannot say it doesn't exist because we cannot detect it.
FWIW, I just don't see how God can be thought of as inside of or existing within that which He has made; i.e., the Creation. Like man, the Creation itself seems to have the nature of imago Dei — i.e., the image or reflection of its Creator.
It's like with a great artist, who is inevitably reflected by his canvas. Thus one can easily distinguish between a Rembrandt and a Van Gogh, for instance. But neither artist is ever really "in" his canvas....
Plus, God's Name is I AM THAT I AM. Thus He describes Himself as pure Being — and not existence at all. Existence is derivative of Being, and a participation in it. Being is eternal and absolute; existence is finite and contingent. Plus this Holy Name also strongly suggests to my mind that God is entirely self-subsistent, sui generis; that is, He has no cause outside of Himself. Ergo, He is the prime mover, the uncaused cause of all that there is, on earth and in Heaven.
Jeepers, I seem to be waxing philosophical here today! Forgive me; I dust off the great Greeks every now and then.... LOLOL!
Thank you so very much, dearest sister in Christ, for your lovely, gracious essay/post!
This is beautifully said and will be a regular meditation for me:
Remember, I mentioned before I'd been meditating on your compilation of Holy Names in There Is Only One Great Commandment!
On that basis, may I humbly declare:
Our Father is Life, in perfect Love, Goodness, and Truth, Beauty, Justice, and Mercy. He is, as Newton said, truly the Lord of Life with His creatures....All praise and glory be to God!
Remembering why I missed your insight bb. Thanks for the ideas and I couldn’t agree more!
Thank you so very much for your testimony, dearest sister in Christ! And thank you for your encouragements!
"How? What makes you so sure about this?
Conservation of energy and the consistency of physics.
" What scientific evidence do you have to support your conclusions?"
See Noether's theorm and the Ward-Takahashi identity and also note that there are no examples of processes violating the conservation of energy principle.
"If the machinery which gives rise to intelligence self-assembled, then the machinery becomes the creator and hence replaces God."
No.
"All you've done is replaced God in the universe with a machine as an explanation of how intelligence arose."
W/o the machinery there is nothing to support the functions of intelligence.
If the machinery self-assembles, doesn’t that imply that the machinery has intelligence of it’s own?
How else would something mindless self-assemble into something producing intelligence?
I can see intelligence before machinery, but machinery before intelligence just doesn’t work.
Being real does not imply subordination.
" Your testimony here and previously at post 74 is much like that of the LDS, that each god is a created spiritual being in a pre-mortal existence,the offspring of prior father-gods in an eternity past;...
Not at all, or in any way, shape, or form.
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