Posted on 03/22/2012 7:44:32 AM PDT by Moseley
Darwin didn't have to know that the inheritable material was subject to molecular change to know that there was such a thing as variation that was subject to selection.
So how could one describe the change in DNA of an adapting bacterial population, that to you is them listening to the “creative Word of God”, without making reference to genetic inheritance, variation, and natural selection of that variation?
I was created by God, from dust, and to dust I will return. I was also created via a cellular process involving DNA. Describing the physical mechanism whereby this was accomplished no more removes God as my creator than describing the physical mechanism whereby species can (and do) change means that God was not their creator; just as describing how stars form through nuclear fusion and gravity doesn't remove God as their creator.
Was my creation “from dust” less literal than the creation of Adam “from dust”?
To you it seems that the “creative Word of God” is necessarily a miraculous mechanism indescribable by physical means or scientific theory. Our main point of contention it seems is that I fully believe the “creative Word of God” is not necessarily miraculous and IS describable (demonstrably in several cases I have outlined) by physical means.
Watch the video and it will give you some clues.
Warning - NSFW, NSFC, NSFW (Not safe for Whitey)
And yet in America, "involuntary servitude" did not extend to Caucasians (unless they were convicted criminals). It was reserved for "inferior races" — mainly blacks, though it was tried with American Indians as well. (The latter did not make "good slaves"; they had "ingrained" habits of "shiftlessness" and of constantly wandering off....)
You can try to whitewash this situation all day long; but it is a fact that many persons of that generation did indeed regard black people as "less than human." And thus fit to be slaves. The slave states would not have been able to compete with the Northern states for power and position in Washington if a huge sector of their population (the slaves) was ineligible to be counted for apportionment purposes. But they could only be counted at three-fifths strength. That right there is clear evidence to me that they were considered as "inferior" to other persons. Not to mention the fact that these three-fifths persons were not even regarded as citizens.
allmendream, you seem always so "doctrinaire," so "by the book" in your comments, as if the surface appearance of, say, a statement is all you need to know. But you need to look deeper than the surface to truly understand what's going on. Otherwise your understanding will be quite shallow....
For instance, everything you wrote in the above italics is "technically correct" — but "correct" only as far as it goes. It stops short of recognizing the actual human dimension of involuntary servitude and all the sheer human suffering it engendered. And to suggest that the three-fifths of a person language was adopted to ensure that black slaves got fair representation in Washington is really pretty risible.
JMHO FWIW
Yep. It's pretty miraculous all right! It positively does not reduce to any physical description whatsoever. :^)
You're right about our "main point of contention." I certainly don't agree with you here: "'The creative Word of God' is not necessarily miraculous and IS describable (demonstrably in several cases I have outlined) by physical means."
All you can "demonstrate" by such physical means is a "reduction" of God to the "size" of allmendream and his personal preferences....
How does describing something physically reduce the Word of God in creation?
Do I understand you correctly?
Do you see or understand the difference?
If I can demonstrate that I was also formed through cellular processes involving DNA does that reduce God in any way shape or form?
Is it possible that I was BOTH created by God - AND created through physical means that God put into place?
If I can demonstrate the physical means - does that - in your mind - reduce the role of God?
If so I understand your reflexive rejection of the scientific method, scientific theory, and the teaching of science.
Heck, you think death threats and raving loonyness is a RATIONAL response to the presentation of a scientific theory!
That right there is pretty funny!!!
It doesn't.
Just to point out that physical — i.e., scientific — descriptions pertain only to physical phenomena. Neither God nor His Word are physical phenomena.
I do not "reflexively reject" any of these things. I just don't want to see dogma taught as science.
You wrote:
Is it possible that I was BOTH created by God — AND created through physical means that God put into place?I think it is more correct to say you were created by God ONLY — and then incarnated in a physical body in due course — this is NOT a second creation, so the word "BOTH" has no relevance here — by means of the natural laws which He laid down in the Beginning.
God used "dust" to manifest the physical Adam in Genesis 2. The "spiritual Adam" — man as non-physical, immaterial soul — was CREATED "unmanifest" in Genesis 1.
The idea of "dust" signifies the material basis of physical life. It has nothing to do with the created soul, which is immaterial and which must precede physical incarnation.
Yes I do. And yet, the slaves were never their "constituents" in the first place.
Your argument suggests you believe that in the interest of preventing unfair and disproportionate power in the hands of representatives, it is entirely just to regard a certain class of people of a state as less than fully human; i.e., as three-fifths folks, not 100-percent folks. And surprise surprise! These three-fifths folks were all black people; i.e., slaves.
I have long regarded this provision of the federal Constitution as its Achilles' Heel. We as a whole people have paid dearly for it over two centuries by now. Plus it is the sort of reasoning that gins the rhetorical engines of race pimps like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson....
So was the creation of my physical body “from dust” less literal than the creation of Adam “from dust”?
Does describing the physical means whereby my body was created warrant the same supposedly rational attacks as would describing the physical means whereby evolution is accomplished?
If the DNA of a bacterial population is changed, and God doesn’t need to directly intervene, why would describing the mechanism whereby the bacterial DNA changed be a “Darwinist” argument?
No, the point of the illustration was the thesis of the article: Darwinism posits throw-away people, inferior people, etc.
The point was about the author’s theory of why she went on a rant: throw away people.
How you get that it was about her wanting to kill people is also how propaganda gets birthed. Quit the spin, TL. It’s obvious.
I have no idea, since I do not know what you mean by "less literal."
Does describing the physical means whereby my body was created warrant the same supposedly rational attacks as would describing the physical means whereby evolution is accomplished?
Darwinian evolution theory is driven by natural selection — which, in itself, is an immaterial concept, not a "physical means."
If the DNA of a bacterial population is changed, and God doesn’t need to directly intervene, why would describing the mechanism whereby the bacterial DNA changed be a “Darwinist” argument?
I wouldn't use a Darwinist argument in the first place. It doesn't explain as much as you think it does.
Darwin's theory is, at best, based on a "smoking gun." (See the excellent article by Carol Cleland for details re: "smoking guns" in science.) As long as Darwinists continue to search for and validate this "smoking gun," they will not be looking for any other plausible explanation for how evolution does its work. And it seems to me that, as long as they insist that evolution is a purely material process, they will continue to miss the boat entirely....
I was created by God “from dust” but there was also an underlying cellular process involving DNA.
Adam was created by God “from dust” as well. Is it possible that as with my own creation “from dust” there was also a cellular process involving DNA going on?
Or was Adam's creation “from dust” a miracle because Adam was literally formed from dust - and my own creation “from dust” LESS literal and LESS miraculous - because I was also created through an understandable physical process?
Death of unfavorable variations in response to environmental stress is a physical means of changing the DNA of a population - it is not just conceptual.
You say you accept evolution - but apparently don't think it is explainable via physical means and that any attempt to do so is a “Darwinist” argument that justified what the woman did.
Do you similarly think that a description of the physical means whereby my body was formed “from dust” would be similarly justification and a “Darwinist” argument that reduces the role of God?
So was my creation “from dust” less literal than the creation of Adam “from dust” because there was an understandable physical process going on in the case of my creation?
Was my creation “from dust” less literal than the creation of Adam “from dust”?
And then goes on to argue that there's nothing crazy about what she did - ie it was all perfectly rational.
Your soul was incarnated as a physical being using "dust" (i.e., "matter" — Genesis 2). You — your essential immaterial soul — was created from Eternity (Genesis 1), for Eternity — not just for its brief passage through the material world. DNA has nothing directly to do with souls. Physicality does not even enter the picture until Genesis 2, when the immortal soul was first "mortalized" as a physical being.
You seem to have an almost religious reverence for DNA. But can you tell me what you think DNA IS?
BTW, I am not a "dis-believer" in DNA. I just wonder whether you and I have the same understanding of what DNA IS....
My question: Do you think DNA is something purely chemical, physical, material? Alternatively, is a code decipher a material thing?
You wrote:
You say you accept evolution — but apparently don't think it is explainable via physical means and that any attempt to do so is a “Darwinist” argument that justified what the woman did.Piffle!
I said that evolution cannot be explained exclusively by purely physical means. Darwinism attempts to do this. And that is why it fails.
Darwinist arguments always "reduce" the role of God in evolution — in fact, Darwinist arguments try to absolutely obviate the role of God, both as Creator and as the genius underwriting creational evolution (so to speak).
Darwinists say: Nature did it!!! We don't need God to explain this!!! Indeed, if you were to ask me, that is the entire point of the Darwinist enterprise; and that is the reason I am not a Darwinist.
I am not attempting to justify what the young woman did. I merely have empathy for her: I can understand how such a thing can happen, which is not the same thing as saying that I applaud it. (I have been known to deploy f-bombs myself, on rare occasions. My dearest 94-year-old mother has been known to threaten to "kill someone" every now and then. But I never expect her to actually do it.)
Keep things in perspective, I say. Don't make a mountain out of a molehill.
Really?
DNA is a molecule, it is a physical molecule, made out of chemical elements, it is material. The molecules that ‘decode’ it into useful proteins are also physical molecules, made out of chemical elements and are material.
Well then, if evolution cannot be explained EXCLUSIVELY by physical means - there must obviously be SOME physical means involved. Could you present them in a non-”Darwinist” argument for us?
Please explain to me what physical means are involved in the evolution you accept.
This should be amusing!!!!
DNA is transcribed into RNA that is then translated into useful proteins.
That is it. That is what DNA is and what it does.
I have no religious reverence for a molecule.
So what my creation “from dust” less literal than the creation of Adam “from dust”?
You are missing my main point. Which is: the "dust" — materiality — doesn't even enter the picture until Genesis 2. All the real, "important business" was transacted immaterially in Genesis 1.
Anther way to put that is: Physical incarnation is utterly dependent on there being a pre-existing "something" to incarnate. Man as a physical being (in contradistinction to a spiritual being) doesn't enter the picture until Genesis 2. This is the point where the physical world first emerges. The fact that there is a physical world to emerge at all is dependent on God's "labors" in Genesis 1.
You say DNA is a "molecule," a physical entity. As such, it is fully governed by chemical and physical processes. Fine. But my question is: What is it that DNA does? And where does it get its "marching orders" from to do what it does?
Do such questions even make any sense to you?
DNA has been described as the decryption key that "selects" for the proper information (and description) relevant to express a particular biological entity — everything from bacteria to daffodils to man — from a non-local source.
If this is so, then please note: we have left the world of biota and have entered the realm of mathematics, in particular the field of cryptology.
And of course, mathematics is not a physical or material thing....
So, would you say you used to prefer blonds but now you pick blackheads? ;o) (sorry, couldn't let such an opening go to waste)
He does not argue that her behavior is acceptable. He says that if it fits his theory of her behavior that it’s understandable why she hates evolution.
That’s a huge difference.
He does assume after presenting his explanation that it’s valid, but that because he was making a point. In other words, THE POINT was what the piece was about.
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