Posted on 04/17/2012 4:27:49 AM PDT by scottfactor
Yes, I read her post, and I understood it. I’ve also read other things by her in the past, including essays she’s published elsewhere. (Assuming she’s the person I’m thinking of.)
I know neither of you said Jesus is a liar. What she said is that if evolution were true, then Jesus must have been lying when He said that God created them male and female at the beginning. I presume she meant this as an argument for why evolution must not be true, rather than an argument for why Jesus was a liar.
You write that God created man male and female regardless of “physical considerations that ensued later.” But evolution is all and only about physical considerations. If you allow that “God created them male and female” might have nothing to do with actual bodies, why can’t our bodies be the product of evolution? What do you mean by “his present state”—an ensouled body/enfleshed spirit? As with the statement about evolution producing Jesus, no one credits Darwinian evolution with producing the soul. If that’s your problem with evolution, you’re arguing with a straw man. (And don’t ask me at what point humans got souls—that’s above my pay grade.)
Which is why arguably it is an "incomplete" theory. It tells us nothing about the origin of life or of consciousness; and yet living beings are both alive and in possession of some form of consciousness. Thus living beings are more than just their material or physical basis. Darwinism can't address that "more" in principle.
It is essentially an historical theory. It tells us what it alleges happened to biological species on an historical timeline. Yet this
...historical (or horizontal) perspective ... is only useful insofar as it helps to illuminate a non-historical or "vertical" dimension operating outside chronological time. Both religious and scientific fundamentalists attempt to locate in historical time what can only be found in metaphysical space, and mistakenly regard conventional history as more "real" than the deeper or higher truth from which it is a declension. — Robert Godwin, One Cosmos under God, 2004, p. 200Plato had an interesting suggestion: He said that the soul is the "form" of the body. That is, it preexists (and post-exists) physical incarnation and is that which "describes" and "orders" the physical. He believed that souls are immortal long before Christianity came along to confirm this astounding insight.
You mentioned that you consider the question of "at what point humans got souls" is "above your pay grade." But God freely tells you this — in Genesis 1.
You say that like it's a flaw in the theory. "Incomplete" is just a scarier word for "limited." The ToE is only trying to explain the physical basis of living beings. That it doesn't try to explain consciousness as well doesn't make its explanation of material bodies wrong, any more than the theory of star formation is wrong if it doesn't explain where the clouds of interstellar gas came from in the first place.
“But evolution is all and only about physical considerations”
Spirited: This is true only for dogmatic reductive materialists (physicalists). Darwinism is indispensable to such people because it is the only materialist explanation for the workings of nature that they have. Since they are physicalists, then Darwinism is “all and only about physical considerations.”
Today many spiritual Transhumanists, evolutionary Christians, Cultural Creative’s, New Age Progressives, Integral Spiritualists, Interspiritualists and/or Transtraditional Spiritualists are adherents of Teilhard’s spiritual evolutionary concept.
Teilhard claims that after millions of years of evolution, a natural (immanent) god has finally emerged out of matter. Whereas Christianity dedivinized nature Teilhards’ idea redivinizes it.
Teilhards’ idea is merely a reprisal of the Babylonian evolutionary cosmogony ‘Enuma Elish’ and Egypts’ ‘The Evolutions of Ra...’ These most ancient evolutionary cosmogonies speak of pre-existing matter (watery chaos, abyss, void, Nu) and of a Sun-God, i.e., Ra, evolving out of it over time.
The respected traditionalist metaphysician Rene Guenon (1886-1951) explains the meaning of ‘the evolutions of Ra’ in his brilliant critical analysis of Theosophy and Spiritism entitled, “The Spiritist Fallacy.”
Guenon writes that within early Theosophist and spiritist (mediums/channelers) circles in Christendom use of the word ‘progress’ or ‘progressivist’ preceded the use of the word ‘evolution.’
The roots of Theosophy, hence of evolution, stretch back to the ancient Upanishads of India, to ancient Greece, and at their furthest reach, to Babylonia and Egypt.
In its Darwinian version, evolution describes the progress of life as it inhabits in succession the bodies of different kinds of lifeforms (macroevolution)over the course of millions and even billions of years.
Though Teilhards’ spiritual concept springboards off of Darwins’ idea it is actually a modern retelling of the Babylonian and Egyptian concept which describes the progress (transmigration) of soul as it inhabits in succession the bodies of different beings (macroevolution)over the course of millions and billions of years.
Guenon adds that eventually the word evolution became preferred, especially by empirical realists and materialists like Karl Marx because it had a more ‘scientific’ allure:
“This kind of ‘verbalism’...provides the illusion of thought for those incapable of really thinking...” said Guenon. (ibid, p. 231)
betty to Ha Ha: You mentioned that you consider the question of “at what point humans got souls” is “above your pay grade.” But God freely tells you this — in Genesis 1.
Spirited: Now either Teilhard’s idea is responsible for your soul or the supernatural Triune God is. If the former you are made in the image of nothing. If the latter you are a tripartite being, the spiritual image-bearer of the Triune God.
What physical basis? Or to put it another way, the physical basis of WHAT???
How can one speak of the physical basis of life (and consciousness) if one's theory does not and cannot even deal with such considerations, for methodological (and ideological) reasons?
Is macroevolution some kind of "physical basis?" Nobody has ever seen "macroevolution" at work. It is as much an unobservable as the "angelic choir in heaven"....
Yes, evolution has a physical basis just as erosion has a physical basis. Nobody saw the Grand Canyon form - but we have seen the process at work that would have formed it over many years. Nobody saw horses evolve from split hoofed animals - but we have seen the process at work that would explain the genetic changes that went along with the morphological changes.
Do you need to see a star form from the beginning to utilize the predictive model that gravity and nuclear fusion is how stars form?
Yes. And yes.
Life and consciousness accompany one another. Where the first is found, at least the rudiments of the second are found, too.
Scientific studies actually bear this out. Based on experimental findings, it appears that bacteria are not only "social animals" (so to speak), but they demonstrate the rudiments of learning in their behavior.
A bacteria makes no decisions. Either a response is molecularly triggered or it is not. There is no “learning”, but there is evolution.
A bacterial population subjected to a novel antibiotic doesn't “learn” to overcome the antibiotic - either they are of a genetic variation subject to the antibiotic or they are not.
That is natural selection of genetic variation - not learning.
The only way a bacteria “learns” is through subsequent rounds of evolution - like how a bacteria “learned” to digest nylon by mutating and further mutating the gene for an esterase enzyme until it was an enzyme that efficiently metabolized nylon.
Learning implies choices based upon knowledge.
A bacteria has no choices or knowledge - only molecular interactions.
So, how does a bacterium or a molecule "know" what to do, in order to manifest an "interaction?" Is this blind chance operating under the temporizing disguise of so-called "natural selection?" From which we can extrapolate so to say that the entire universe is the result of "chance," not God's creative Word?
You assert much, my friend. But never tell me on what basis your assertions can possibly rest.
Take, for example, a study I read regarding a laboratory experiment with amoebae.
Here was an amoeba, sitting in a petri dish culture into which a couple of grains of China ink was introduced. At first, the amoeba reached out as if to digest it, as potential "food." But almost instantly, it "spitted it out." It somehow knew that China ink was not food for it. So, the next time grains of China ink were introduced, the amoeba did not even approach them at all.
Looks to me like the amoeba "learned something." And in order to learn something, some form of consciousness must be present. Surely not the full-blown self-consciousness of a human being — said to be the only species on earth that possesses this quality. But a sort of consciousness sufficient to learn something new by trial and error.
Which seems to be more than some people can do, nowadays.
Teilhard’s Omega Point strikes me as the point at which the Triune God of Christian orthodoxy is dissolved into the pantheism of Advaita-Vedanta (Hindu) philosophy. At which point, all notions of personality — divine and human — are utterly erased.
Just a thought, FWIW.
Leave it to the Jesuits to come up with an idea like this.
Thank you so very much, dear sister in Christ, for your fascinating, informative essay/post!
Experience has shown that many of the workings of nature (some previously thought to require supernatural intervention) do, in fact, have a materialist explanation. Given the centuries of sucess of scientists looking for such explanations, it's understandable that they'd keep looking. They don't have to be "dogmatic" or "reductive" (or even "materialist")--they just have to assume that the universe operates according to discoverable laws, and then try to discover them.
As for all those other people: it's not the fault of a theory about the evolution of bodies that some philosophers convince themselves it can be applied to the evolution of souls or the divine as well.
Because it works. I've suggested before that you have a tendency towards an "if we can't know everything, we don't know anything" approach to these issues. But take, for instance, the germ theory of how we get sick. We have a theory for the physical basis of disease, involving microorganisms and antibodies and receptors and all that stuff, and it seems to mostly work for making people better. But it doesn't explain why we're alive in the first place, or why placebos work, or why there are microorganisms. Does that mean it's no good? No, it just means it's limited--but within its purview, it's a very powerful theory. Same with evolution.
Is macroevolution some kind of "physical basis?" Nobody has ever seen "macroevolution" at work.
Sure we have. We've seen lizards develop new physical structures to accommodate a new diet. How macro do things have to be?
That about sums it up. That is exactly the non-sequitur fallacy that your belief system is predicated upon.
You called me a liar but yes I studied biology and evolution in college, so yes I know very well the weaknesses of the discredited theory of evolution and I know the very good reasons to be skeptical of Darwinism and Darwinists. I also studied logic.
You want to just wave your hand and say that your theory MUST be true because it INEVITABLE! That's not science or reason, it's fanaticism.
Based upon signals the amoeba will either absorb an item or reject it - and will express more molecules to detect a toxin when it is introduced so as to avoid it.
It is not a matter of choice.
Either the molecular interactions go off or they do not.
The basis of my assertions is a knowledge of biology. It is easy to think it is all magical or consciousness when you don't actually understand what DNA is and what it is doing in the context of an amoeba in a “petri dish”.
Because evolution is change in DNA - and DNA is not a stable molecule generation to generation - therefore evolution is inevitable.
You can deal with that fact or not - accusing me of fanaticism doesn’t address the fact that any form of molecular inheritance is subject to molecular change.
Indeed. One of my greatest challenges in graduate school was to minimize environment stresses so that my mammalian cells would NOT evolve. Danged things evolved anyway, generally making them useless after 15-20 passages.
Evolution is not only an ongoing process, it is impossible to stop.
As a scientific methodology, creationism *is* useless.
That isn't to say that Christianity is useless. Clearly, it has great use, in that it shapes the moral fabric of our society and influences our legal structure. It simply is not the proper tool to use, e.g., for investigating phylogenetic relationships of strains of the papillomavirus when trying to determine whether a specific strain is oncogenic.
If we postulate that Creationism is the Truth, then your statement is that the Truth is useless when one is attempting to study Science. I'm sure you wouldn't say such a thing.
DNA is an organic molecule. A system containing the elements that make up organic molecules (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen), a few other elements, and energy, spontaneously produces a large variety of organic molecules according to physical law.
DNA is not "just" a physical molecule. It is one of the greatest "mysteries" in the world; for it not only maps the genome; but it can read it, and knows the "rules" of how to transcribe this intangible information into tangible physical processes/effects.
The information is not "intangible." It is very physical, in fact, as are the enzymatic processes that eventually end up with various proteins that perform various functions on the organismal level.
There is nothing in physics or chemistry that can explain any of this. Certainly Darwin is no help at all here — he never even heard of DNA during his lifetime....
Any biochemist and/or molecular biologist can explain this, at every step of the way, in excruciating detail.
It does not matter that Darwin did not know the nature of DNA. Both his work and that of Mendel suggested that some sort of physical process was necessary for the variations seen between species, and between members of a single species. It was this implication inherent in their work that led generations of scientists to investigate and debate what the nature of this physical process was, a debate that was mostly settled in the 1950s when Watson, Crick, Franklin, and Wilkins solved the structure of DNA. From knowing the structure of DNA, it was a short step to demonstrating that DNA was, in fact, capable of storing the necessary information.
DNA consists of four letters, A, T, C, G. Those four letters are transcribed into RNA through physical enzymatic processes. The letters in RNA are A, U, C, G. Amino acids of proteins are coded by three letter words. AUG, for example, codes for methionine. The RNA letter string feeds through a ribosome, which attaches amino acids together in the order that their corresponding words appear in the RNA. The process is completely mechanical and explainable.
The wall we run up against here is that the charlatans who sell young-earth creationism insist, as one of their selling points, that science and religion are incompatible and mutually exclusive. For someone who has swallowed that line, accepting that the evidence underpinning science is real means abandoning the promise of redemption and eternal life. The Pope himself has pointed out that there is no incompatibility between being a Christian and being a scientist, and he is a lot more credible than charlatans like Gish and his ilk...
I point out that most creationists ALSO believe in speciation - when they need to - and with dramatic speed and power.
Whenever I engage in these debates, I try to make it very clear that I am only addressing the issue of young-earth creationism, which I also call literal creationism.
I have no argument with any creationist who says that God created the universe through the mechanism of the big bang, 14 billion or so years ago, and at that time formulated all of the physical laws which make it possible for life to exist.
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