Posted on 02/15/2003 4:18:25 PM PST by PatrickHenry
I couldn't begin to describe what base the organism as a whole is made up of. Base 20, perhaps, from the 20 amino acids? I still think there's no there there, because organisms are analog/digital hybrids. But to each their own...
Excuse me, but science, the foundation of the modern theory of evolution does not require one to believe anything.
Also, the modern theory of evolution is a scientific theory which is different from the colloquial term "theory" which means guess or hunch.
A scientific theory is an observation made about a collection of observable, testable facts.
I'm sorry if you don't like the question. You can ignore it of course, but it is serious. Your claim is a common one from creationists, but I've never been able to get a straight answer to it.[AM:] God must be greater and more perfect than we are, in order for us to be what we are. What he cannot be is something less than we are.
[JP:] So, "perfection" is a substance, that can be divided up & distributed among people, but cannot be created or grown from lesser amounts of perfection? Is there like a Law of Conservation of Perfection?
[AM:] Your questions are not honest, respectful, or sincere. If you are SERIOUS about understanding scholastic ontology, there are loads of good textbooks around.
Why do you think that the entity that created us must be "greater and more perfect than we are"? What do you mean (precisely!) by "greater", and what precisely do you mean by "more perfect"? How do you measure these things? "Greater", after all, implies measurement of some kind. What exactly are you measuring?
I see that people give birth to other people who sometimes turn out to be more intelligent, stronger, healthier, etc. than their parents. This happens all the time. When this happens, the smarter children aren't necessarily less healthy or physically weaker than their less-intelligent siblings or their parents. Where's the conservation of total "perfection" here? Where's the automatic tradeoff that keeps the "perfection" or "greatness" of the offspring <= the perfection or greatness of the creators?
If I have one child, and then I have another, haven't I created twice the "perfection" or "greatness" than was there before? What if I produce 10 intelligent, well-behaved, happy children instead of just one? Are you really saying that these 10 children, taken together, cannot equal the perfection & greatness of their 2 parents? Is the Law of Conservation of Greatness at work here?
Humans, who can run at most 25 mph (or whatever), regularly design & construct devices that move much faster than that. We design & construct devices that solve problems that we can't even visualize well, let alone solve ourselves in any length of time. But there's no obvious tradeoff of the form "the more powerful a computer, the more energy it must use", or "the more powerful a computer, the less reliable it will be", or "the more powerful a computer, the uglier it will be".
There seems to be no Law of Conservation of Perfection (or "Greatness") anywhere. I think it's just an emotional or aesthetic judgement on your part. Which would be fine, but that's something completely different than any kind of rigorous philosophical/logical/scientific/mathematical statement about the world.
So, "perfection" is a substance, that can be divided up & distributed among people, but cannot be created or grown from lesser amounts of perfection? Is there like a Law of Conservation of Perfection?I guess the post above is for you, too. Please tell me, precisely, what scientific or logical principle, mathematical theorem, or scientific law prohibits a process or person from creating something that is "greater" or "more perfect" than themselves.You are a material girl, aren't you?
Do you know?
and that is exactly what we have been trying to tell you. The problem is you are too busy looking and studying the wrong things.
I don't think I said this, but I will address it.
There is no "wrong thing" to study. If you want to study philosophy, study it, if you want to study science, study it. If you want to teach someone about science, don;t confuse them by injecting philosophy.
But you want to keep us from studying anything, not for us to focus on something different - a complete difference in philosophical outlook.
Perhaps that's the point he's trying to make.
However, I think there is a growing percentage of scientists who say evolution is not the answer, whether or not they embrace creationism or intelligent design.
I for one think that when you look at all the "assumptions" that an evolutionist makes. That there is room for any number of alternative ideas.
It continues to astound me that in an age where man is capable of genetic modification and producing designer crops and animals, that evolutionists are closed minded to the possiblity that man himself may have been engineered.
From my limited knowledge, I could refer to the 2nd Law of Termodynamics, but I'm sure that is to inferrential for you. So I'll just say, "no" and ask you to show me where you can demonstrate that it has happened.
I don't see creationists trying to keep study from happening. I do see "objectivists" and "logical positivists" trying to dictate for all, what kinds of things may and may not be considered.
No Jenny, even your oversimplication above is inadequate to explain the processing. Memory chips don't self-replicate, after all...
Furthermore, you would have to abandon your earlier agreement in this very thread that DNA does indeed process information in order to even begin to agree with Sentis' outdated, long-since-disproven claims.
Why go there?
A bit off the subject, but in general one could probably say that a template can never achieve more perfection than its first instance.
Make a copy of a copy and it will NEVER be better than the original, for example.
On the other hand, if one is dealing with processing, rather than with templates, then it is clear that the processing can result in output that is more advanced than the original. A language program can add words to its vocabulary, for instance. An assembly program can self-modify its own programming code, for anther.
Of course, to understand that the orginal can be improved upon, one has to accept that one is dealing with processing rather than with templates, something that has been lost on at least a couple of posters so far in this thread...
There are certain qualities or quantities that we get from our parents, and there are certain others that we develop on our own, or get from other influences.
In your questions, you deliberately jumble all these things together, and seem to think you are scoring points.
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