It is my "personal opinion" that if one is asking questions about the origin of life and mind, Darwin's theory holds no answers whatsoever. I do believe that even BroJoeK agrees with that.
It further appears to me that if one is asking questions of the order, "What is Life? What is Mind? How do they arise in Nature?" then Neo-Darwinism has precisely zero answers. And yet Neo-Darwinists seemingly have complete grip on the conduct of the biological sciences these days.
Whatever the case, BroJoeK keeps intoning the official mantra of Neo-Darwinism: All explanations of Nature must be predicated on "natural causes."
It doesn't ever seem to occur to him that "natural causes" can be downstream from a Cause that is not "natural" in the sense BroJoeK and his like-minded friends do not and cannot recognize, given their prior commitment — their epistemically prior commitment — to the theory of universal, reductionist materialism.
Can't explain anything about this sort of revolt against, not only God, but of human nature itself that I see on display here, from some of our correspondents, my very dear sister in Christ. Yet as you already know, I find the "mystery of iniquity" to be completely unfathomable by me....
You and I cannot find agreement on the questions to be asked because we are not working on the same problem. You said earlier that it is not an intellectual problem, but a spiritual problem. This is your opinion and your perspective. You ask questions trying to solve a spiritual problem.
From my perspective (and I suspect BroJoeK's) it is an intellectual problem, so I ask different questions.
betty: Can’t explain anything about this sort of revolt against, not only God, but of human nature itself that I see on display here, from some of our correspondents, my very dear sister in Christ
Spirited: The following excerpts from “Bus Ride from Hell” may help shed some light.
Bus Ride from Hell
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/kimball/120904
Early on Lewis understood that Cosmic and Secular Humanism were merely two sides of the same revival of pagan monism. Thus he argued, Cosmic and Secular Humanism are not enemies in principle but rather cooperating philosophies of naturalism united against the Creator Who exists outside of the time-space universe, His Revelation to mankind, Original Sin, His moral law, Christian theism, and Christian-based civilization.
During Lewis’s lifetime, cosmic and secular humanist ideas and philosophical systems were growing in acceptance and popularity throughout academia, within seminaries, universities and among the masses.
Among common points of departure for both types of humanism are the following ideas:
1. Rejection of the living God Who dwells outside the time-space universe with special antipathy directed against Jesus Christ God incarnate in favor of “only this world” naturalism; no God, a distant God or pantheist conceptions of God, and Jesus Christ as a mortal teacher such as Buddha, the angelic brother of Lucifer, or perhaps a highly evolved Transcended Master or spirit guide.
2. Rejection of the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo in favor of ‘this-worldly’ mechanical evolutionary processes
3. Rejection of physical eternal life in either Paradise (renewed earth) or hell in favor of no afterlife whatsoever or wholly spiritual conceptions such as man’s ghost forever wandering about in the aerial realm of spirits or perhaps living a phantom existence on a planet
4. Humanity as deity.
5. Subjectivism: No right way, no wrong way, all directions lead to the same place.
The dangers of holding erroneous views are profound and in his book, “The Great Divorce,” Lewis attempted to address them by presenting us with a masterful study of the psychology of the hell-bound versus the psychology of the Paradise-bound.
As Lewis fleshes out his view of hell, he relies in part on his mentor George MacDonald, a Scottish preacher and writer who believed there might be a final opportunity for the unrepentant on earth to repent after their death. Building off this idea, Lewis depicts the damned as taking a bus ride from hell to heaven, where they come in contact with “real” reality.
Heaven is a place of matter, of weight and mass and the blessed inhabitants are the beautiful “bright solid people” as opposed to the self-idolizing dirty shades without mass, or matter. N.T. Wright explains,
“...there will be a new mode of physicality, which stands in relation to our present body as our present body does to a ghost....a Christian in the present life is a mere shadow of his or her future self, the self that person will be when the body that God has waiting in his heavenly storeroom is brought out...and put on...over the self that will still exist after bodily death.” (Eternal Perspectives, Randy Alcorn, p. 154-155)
The bus finally arrives in heaven having arisen from what turns out to be a mere crack in the ground for Lewis sees all Hell as,
“....smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World.” (The Great Divorce, An Essay, Allen Adams, cslewis.drzeus.net)
As the hell-bound depart the bus they are shocked by the realization that not only are they dirty ghosts but they cannot abide the matter, the fleshiness of heaven because in life, like the pagan sages, the Gnostic Arnobius and contemporary secular and cosmic transhumanists, they were dissatisfied with their own bodies and created condition as either male or female for example, as well as with the finiteness of their own minds. In “Adversus nationes” (2.37) Arnobius complains,
“If souls were of the Lord’s race...They would never come to these terrestrial places (and) inhabit opaque bodies and (be) mixed with humors and blood, in receptacles of excrement, in vases of urine.” (The Pagan Temptation, Thomas Molnar, p. 27)
Molnar explains that from Plato to Plotinus, it was held as axiomatic that from being as one with or an aspect of the Divine Substance souls had inexplicably fallen into the material realm, a place of misery, suffering and binary, which means for example, two distinct sexes rather than a two-in-one, the androgynous being called ‘gay’ in modern terminology. Salvation was secured through the mystery cults which,
“...afforded their devotees the opportunity to erase the curse of mortality by direct encounter with the patron deity or in many instances by actually undergoing an apotheosis, a transfiguration of human into divine. The process of ‘initiation’ in the mystery religions, therefore, had as its objective the liberation of the soul from its earthly...chains” (C.K. Barrett cited in “The Interruption of Eternity,” Carl A. Raschke, p. 28)
Carl Teichrib, author of “The Rise of Techno-Gods: The Merging of Transhumanism and Spirituality” writes that transhumanists believe they are on the verge of evolving into deity. They are no longer mere humans but post-humans. Theirs is the technical quest for the Holy Grail, ascension through engineering. Transhumanism is modern-day alchemy and magic, the contemporary manifestation of the Secret Doctrine of Hermes Trismegistus Thoth: “All is One, and that One is Divinity.”
Transhumanist Mark Pesce, a co-inventor of 3-D interfacing for the worldwide web and a panelist and judge on ABC’s show The New Inventors, puts it this way,
“.... we seek... a transcendence of transience, translation to incorruptible form. An escape if you will, a stop to the wheel. We seek, therefore, to bless ourselves with perfect knowledge and perfect will; To become as gods, take the universe in hand, and transform it in our image — for our own delight. As it is on Earth, so it shall be in the heavens. There is no God but Man.” (Carl Teichrib, www.forcingchange.org)
At the root of the rejection of the living God by the hell-bound is the rebellious assertion that man has not been created by Him, that he is not dependent upon Him for his own life, thus he is not created in His spiritual image. He is not dependent upon the living God but is rather a man-god, the creator of God, and the master of time, being, and the world who through his own powers will save himself.
Blaming the true God for their misery the hell-bound say to Him, “you are not my father:”
“I am I, I come out of myself, and in choice and action I make myself.” (Daniel Bell, quoted by Herbert Schlossberg in “Idols for Destruction,” p. 43)
"It doesn't ever seem to occur to him that 'natural causes' can be downstream from a Cause that is not 'natural' in the sense BroJoeK and his like-minded friends do not and cannot recognize, given their prior commitment — their epistemically prior commitment — to the theory of universal, reductionist materialism."
To Ms. Boop: I've posted my response to your allegations now several times, most recently in #1,196 above, to which you might also note 1010RD's response in #1,201.
Ms Boop, the issue here is not the epistemic definition of reality, since that includes (as was noted by St. Thomas Aquinas) both natural and super-natural realms.
It's only the definition of science, which since the time of Aquinas has meant only the natural realm.
For investigations into the super-natural realm you must go outside of science, into some other branch of philosophy or religion.
So please tell us how such a simple concept can be so difficult for you to grasp?