The theory of evolution by natural selection: Natural selection is the gradual natural process by which biological traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of the effect of inherited traits on the differential reproductive success of organisms interacting with their environment.
For a given environment, assuming that the living population already exists and that there is a variation of genetic traits in that population, those traits that enable making more babies than the other traits become more common. Split the population in two and put the the two groups in different environments, you'll end up with two different sets of traits being selected for.
This is untestable?
"Soul: “The spiritual, rational and immortal substance in man, which distinguishes him from brutes; that part of man which enables him to think and reason.”"
Have you even looked at human history? Did you even read the Bible instead parroting what your pastor said? The romanticism of the early nineteenth century had sown the seeds of the West's destruction. It was the progenitor of progressivism. Your average low-information voter is a very base and instinctual being, the typical human.
"In conclusion, all three theories originated in the mind (spirit). As mind is a power of soul, then Darwinism, empiricism, and observationalism are spiritual."
The brain's function is determined by genetics, and since the mind is what the brain does, your instincts and personality (largely genetically determined) are based on inherited traits. Note that human population groups are in different environments. If you actually understand this and natural selection, the implications are going to be very, very, politically incorrect.
From Fyodor Dostoevsky and GK Chesterton to Thomas Molnar, Eric Voegelin and many other incisive, penetrating analytical thinkers, all have concluded that underlying natural science (all that exists is the natural or material dimension)and evolution are two spiritual pathologies:
1. the perennial utopian heresy (i.e., Nimrod’s Tower, communism, socialism and other new world order conceptions)
2. Gnostic dualism
Gnostic dualism holds that the material body into which divine sparks fell and are thus entombed are evil because all matter is evil. In the modern version, man is not fallen, he is not a sinner because his evil genes made him do it-—lie, cheat, swindle, murder, etc.
Gnostic dualism is a continuation of ancient pagan teachings along the same lines but with one major difference...it incorporates a paganized Bible and Christian theism. Thus it teaches that Yahweh is the evil demiurge responsible for creating matter while Lucifer is the first free thinker, the liberator of mankind, the seething energies of evolution, the angel of evolution and the Being of Light encountered by haters of Yahweh and other unbelievers during NDE’s and other OBE’s who lovingly tells them that heaven is for everyone.
Through evolution matter becomes progressively pure and perfect until the terminal point is reached: the spiritualized, divinized whole substance: Omega Point(heaven)
For the Gnostic who has willed his own emancipation because he is not fallen but rather possesses a particle of the divine, evolution is a system of self-perfecting.
Your refutation of my previous post exemplifies the peculiar dichotomy produced by Gnostic thinkers. The first three paragraphs are the work of an emancipated mind, free spirit, pure spirit, Transhumanist essence or pattern trapped within evil matter, or meat machine and it’s grey matter as expressed in the 4th and final paragraph:
“The brain’s function is determined by genetics, and since the mind is what the brain does, your instincts and personality (largely genetically determined) are based on inherited traits”
Oh really, dear R7 Rocket?
This is a most sweeping claim. So I just need to ask you a question: How do you know that? On what evidence do you depend to come up with this conclusion?
Please give me a thorough briefing on this matter. for I find your statement totally perplexing.
What you are saying is that mind is merely an epiphenomenon of physico/chemical processes in the brain. This claim is so sweeping, that I really do demand to see your evidence for it. For epiphenomena are thought to have zero causative effect on anything. Yet it seems quite evident to me that minds are capable of changing the ways that human beings decide and act. And I am to suppose to think that this is some sort of fluke of brain chemistry???
And while you're thinking that over (I hope), here are some other questions I have for you:
Do you believe that the evolution of human beings is essentially random? That the only power in nature that can establish anything new in biology is environmental pulls of Nature itself ("natural selection"), acting on accidents of mutation? (Which are usually fatal to organisms afflicted by such mutations?)
Another question: Do you believe there is any such thing as human nature itself? That is, that human nature might somehow be a "given" in Nature, and not a product of some (fictitious) evolutionary process?
If you check the history of the human race, you will find that, over thousands and thousands of millennia (judging from the historical record), that human beings qua human beings do not change much over time. I find it positively striking that whether you are consulting records from ancient Egypt, through classical philosophy, through Judeo-Christian writings, or just reading the 14th-century writer Boccaccio (See: The Decameron), the same human problems and concerns always emerge as the same over all historical time. The human "picture" seems never to change.
So, how does Darwin's theory help us to understand ourselves? Answer: It doesn't. It just changes the subject entirely. It says there is no human "nature." Man is "unfinished business," just leave it up to Nature to "complete" him. The next thing you know, the way things are going, is that Man will "evolve" into a machine, or "devolve" into a sub-human, vicious predator. And as long as we can blame his "brain" for doing all this, then Man is not responsible for what happens to him or to his species or the very world around him, which he profoundly influences by his thoughts ands actions. "Nature did it!!!"
If man suffers from this disordered understanding, if his societies deconstruct into chaos and strife as a result, then it's okay: "Nature did it," not man.
Man is responsible for nothing if he is but the pawn of the activities of his bodily chemistry.
And oh, by the way, where did DNA come from? Is that an "accident" too, just another evolutionary process?
Looking forward to hearing from you. Thank you for writing!