Posted on 11/01/2003 4:14:09 AM PST by I Am Not A Mod
You said it brother!
Christians just don't buy into something because it happens to be the only theory available at the time. That is why we so often call it a religion. It is. Your faith is put into something which is a plausable explanation, but has not been proven. You deny the possibility of other options becuase there is no "proof". The proof is in front of your face, but you are blinded to it.
This entire existance which we live in is completly covered with the signs of intelligent work. You don't see it. You think that a bunch of mutations created one species that rules the others. You think mutations created political systems, evil, love, violence, happiness...it's crazy.
Thousands of years ago, an explanation was offered which makes sense. An explanation was offered which gives meaning, not just an explanation. You guys refuse to read the Bible for the most part...
Oh? There's only one viable theory about where babies come from, but I suppose you can always reject that too. After all, it's important to have alternatives, no matter how bad they look in comparison to the generally accepted theory, right?
Your faith is put into something which is a plausable explanation, but has not been proven. You deny the possibility of other options becuase there is no "proof".
No, I dismiss the other explanations because of a lack of evidence, not because of a lack of proof. And if you deny the theory of evolution because it's not proven, then you will wind up disbelieving virtually every single thing you think you know. You can't prove that the sun will rise tomorrow, but you believe that it will anyway. But now that you demand proof, you'll simply have to admit that you don't really know if the sun will rise tomorrow - could go either way, as far as you're concerned.
This entire existance which we live in is completly covered with the signs of intelligent work. You don't see it.
If it were half as obvious as you seem to think it is, we wouldn't be having this conversation. As it stands now, it's more likely that you're seeing things that aren't there.
Thousands of years ago, an explanation was offered which makes sense. An explanation was offered which gives meaning, not just an explanation. You guys refuse to read the Bible for the most part...
And yet you're the one misreading it by claiming it speaks to things it does not speak to, by presuming to fill in the blanks for God and speak on his behalf. Yes, the Bible gives us the meaning, the why. What it does not do is give us an intimate and detailed look at how. That is what reason is for, so that we may discover how for ourselves. The Bible does not address every detail of the material world, and it is obviously not intended to. And if you think it does, why don't you start by finding the chapter and verse that explains the reason for a dandelion making flowers? And the chapter and verse that explains the exact mechanism whereby you stick to the ground instead of flying off into space. And the chapter and verse that explains what lightning is made of. And the chapter and verse that explains why the planets sometimes appear to be moving backwards as you look at them. And the chapter and verse that explains why snowflakes are made of crystals with six points, and not five or seven or thirteen points. And so forth. The Bible is not the sum total of everything that can be known, no matter how much you might wish it to be so.
Considering your tone and rambling now, it is obvious that you aren't doing any of that "theory" to make any babies.
No, I dismiss the other explanations because of a lack of evidence, not because of a lack of proof.
Lack of evidence? There is a lack of evidence for intelligent design?
But now that you demand proof, you'll simply have to admit that you don't really know if the sun will rise tomorrow - could go either way, as far as you're concerned.
You are so far off track now that it is comical.
LOL. In case anyone was still on the fence about whether ID theory is intellectually bankrupt or not, this gem ought to clear it right up.
Lack of evidence? There is a lack of evidence for intelligent design?
Obviously. ID theory in toto basically consists of saying "I don't see how X could have evolved, therefore X didn't evolve." If the logical flaws of that kind of thinking aren't immediately apparent, I don't think I can help you.
You are so far off track now that it is comical.
Chapter and verse, please. What do dandelions need flowers for? It's really a very simple question, and one that can be readily explained by evolutionary theory. Why won't you give us the explanation that you claim exists, but mysteriously can't be bothered to post?
Although I've noted that Gray (and incidently me) was on the same "side" as Fiske -- and contra Darwin -- in terms of the view that God is intimately involved in the details of evolution, that's not to say that they were philosophical allies. In this respect Gray sided with Darwin (and incidently me) in finding little value in the "purely deductive," idealist, expansive philosophical systems of Fiske and Spencer. From Dupree's biography of Gray, pgs 364-65 (typing this in from my copy):
The question of a publisher [for Gray's Darwiniana] had yet to be settled, but when the rumor went around that Gray was to republish [his essays and reviews of Darwin from the Atlantic Monthly and elsewhere] he got an immediate reaction. It did not come from the religious press but from E.L. Youmans, the disciple of Spencer who worked for the Appletons. Gray must have been something of a puzzle to those apostles of evolution in America, Youmans and John Fiske. He was closer to Darwin than they. And each time they went to Europe they heard his priase sung loudly in the Darwin circle itself. Yet Gray's attitude toward them was cool.John Fiske had made a real effort to put Gray on a Darwinian pedestal by contrasting him with the unmerciful portrait he drew of Agassiz. [Agassiz was Harvard's head of zoology and America's most influential opponent of Darwin.] Gray's reaction was anything but warm. The article "seems to me remarkable for the truths which it were better not to say, at least in the tone adopted. It seems to me in rather bad taste, and the writer -- not being a naturalist -- does not know what Mr. A's good work and strong points are." Once Gray spoke of Youmans as "a great admirer and useful friend of Herbert Spencer -- I imagine a dilletante sort of man."
The basis of Gray's coolness to these Spencerians was more than that they were a generation younger than he and publicists rather than scientists. In the great shift of opinion following the publication of the Origin of Species, the followers of Spencer had replaced Agassiz as the American idealists, the allies of transcendentalism, and the believers in nature as the reflection of an immanent diety. Evolution had a central place with them, but the a priori method of reasoning belonged to the tradition of Agassiz rather that to that of Darwin. Gray was against closed systems of philosophy, regardless of the place they gave to evolution. Both Spencer and his followers and the German evolutionists by then on the rise were in Gray's eyes speculative rather than scientific. [FOOTNOTE here: "An indication on the Germans is given where Gray wrote 'Good!' in the margin of the proof sheets of Francis Darwin, ed., Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, II, 186, at the point where T. H. Huxley says that the German biologists 'were evolutionistis, a priori, already and they must have felt the disgust natural to deductive philosophers at being offered an inductive and experimental foundation for a conviction they had reached by a shorter cut.'"] It was in a letter to G. F. Wright in 1875 that Gray paid his last respects to Chauncey Wright by referring to the latters' aricle, "German Darwinism," in the Nation and emphasizing the difference between Darwinism and Spencerism. Later Gray specifically made the same point against John Fiske's Christian cosmic evolutionism when he said that the "wonder is, not at this climax of Christian hope, but as to how it can be legitimately attained from the underlying scientific data." A humble belief in the mysteries of orthodox Christianity seemed to Gray more scientific than a dogmatic adherence to any philosophy old or new.
I already gave you a link to the Project Guttenburg edition of Gray's Darwiniana. This collects a number of Gray's essays on evolution, his contemporaneous reviews of Darwin's books, and a concluding chapter, written for the occassion, on teleology and design.
No I don't. I have noted REPEATEDLY in this thread that Darwin abandoned Christianity later in his adulthood. For instance, only a few messages upthread I wrote to you, "Darwin not a Christian (after around 1851 or so)."
I'm reading a bit now, as I have time. It's hard to stay awake while doing so however. He's not quite as turgid as Spencer, but damned close.
Explain love from a evolutionary standpoint. Better yet, explain mortality. Why do we keep dying? Are we going to "evolve" out of that.
And the long-continued accumulation of beneficial variations will infallibly have led to structures as diversified, as beautifully adapted for various purposes and as excellently co-ordinated, as we see in the animals and plants around us. Hence I have spoken of selection as the paramount power, whether applied by man to the formation of domestic breeds, or by nature to the production of species. I may recur to the metaphor given in a former chapter: if an architect were to rear a noble and commodious edifice, without the use of cut stone, by selecting from the fragments at the base of a precipice wedge-formed stones for his arches, elongated stones for his lintels, and flat stones for his roof, we should admire his skill and regard him as the paramount power. Now, the fragments of stone, though indispensable to the architect, bear to the edifice built by him the same relation which the fluctuating variations of organic beings bear to the varied and admirable structures ultimately acquired by their modified descendants. [...]The shape of the fragments of stone at the base of our precipice may be called accidental, but this is not strictly correct; for the shape of each depends on a long sequence of events, all obeying natural laws; on the nature of the rock, on the lines of deposition or cleavage, on the form of the mountain, which depends on its upheaval and subsequent denudation, and lastly on the storm or earthquake which throws down the fragments. But in regard to the use to which the fragments may be put, their shape may be strictly said to be accidental. And here we are led to face a great difficulty, in alluding to which I am aware that I am travelling beyond my proper province. An omniscient Creator must have foreseen every consequence which results from the laws imposed by Him. But can it be reasonably maintained that the Creator intentionally ordered, if we use the words in any ordinary sense, that certain fragments of rock should assume certain shapes so that the builder might erect his edifice? If the various laws which have determined the shape of each fragment were not predetermined for the builder's sake, can it be maintained with any greater probability that He specially ordained for the sake of the breeder each of the innumerable variations in our domestic animals and plants;--many of these variations being of no service to man, and not beneficial, far more often injurious, to the creatures themselves? Did He ordain that the crop and tail-feathers of the pigeon should vary in order that the fancier might make his grotesque pouter and fantail breeds? Did He cause the frame and mental qualities of the dog to vary in order that a breed might be formed of indomitable ferocity, with jaws fitted to pin down the bull for man's brutal sport? But if we give up the principle in one case,--if we do not admit that the variations of the primeval dog were intentionally guided in order that the greyhound, for instance, that perfect image of symmetry and vigour, might be formed,--no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that variations, alike in nature and the result of the same general laws, which have been the groundwork through natural selection of the formation of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and specially guided. However much we may wish it, we can hardly follow Professor Asa Gray in his belief "that variation has been led along certain beneficial lines," like a stream "along definite and useful lines of irrigation." If we assume that each particular variation was from the beginning of all time preordained, then that plasticity of organisation, which leads to many injurious deviations of structure, as well as the redundant power of reproduction which inevitably leads to a struggle for existence, and, as a consequence, to the natural selection or survival of the fittest, must appear to us superfluous laws of nature. On the other hand, an omnipotent and omniscient Creator ordains everything and foresees everything. Thus we are brought face to face with a difficulty as insoluble as is that of free will and predestination. [BOOK ENDS HERE]
How much clearer can you get? Darwin, in your favored reference, specifically REJECTS the notion that God determines the specific variations that occur respective to the actions of selection.
You've repeatedly claimed that this book supports your claims, BUT YOU'VE NEVER EXPLAINED HOW. Time to put up or shut up.
Actually, evolutionists have done a great amount of work to show how X could have evolved. I am not saying anything of the sort. I already said that there is all kinds of circumstantial evidence. There is tons of it (written scientific documents, fossils, etc.)
I am saying that X did not evolve becuase there is too much going against the theory such as the intricate details of design in all known species. Design does not spew itself forth from a cosmic goo over billions of years. The most obvious is an intelligent creator. Forget God. Something had to create the machinery of the known existance. It is far too complex to happen by chance, mutations, whatever you want to call it.
I have seen all of the links provided here and before. I have read the stuff. Amazing. But it doesn't offer a realistic solution. As a matter of fact it offers such a web on "this depends on that, which depends on that" that is is hard for any rational person to say, yeah, that works.
Nice spin. I'd put it differently. In philosophical terms Darwin (and Gray) were realists, and Fiske (and Spencer) were idealists. And I would add, in my own spin, idealists of the more insipid variety.
You could say the same thing about a detailed description of solar fusion, yet the sun burns.
Well, that's good. But that is what ID theory is saying. "Irreducible complexity" is nothing more than arguing that something didn't evolve because we can't see how it might have evolved.
I am saying that X did not evolve becuase there is too much going against the theory such as the intricate details of design in all known species.
That sounds great, in a general, vague sort of way, but unless you can point to specifics, it doesn't really mean very much. Pick your favorite case, your best and strongest example of design, and explain how you know it's designed. Then we can deal with actual examples, instead of tossing philosophical assertions at each other ;)
It is far too complex to happen by chance, mutations, whatever you want to call it.
How do you know that, though? Remember, science is about evidence and reasoning, so gut feelings don't get you into the journals or the classrooms. Is there some argument you can put forth, some evidence you can point to, that specifically demonstrates that life cannot be explained by evolution?
As a matter of fact it offers such a web on "this depends on that, which depends on that" that is is hard for any rational person to say, yeah, that works.
Many, many people, when first encountering evolutionary theory, fall into the teleology trap. The first step in getting past that is coming to understand that it didn't have to be this way.
You've offered not a thing for me to reject. You've waved your arms about a great deal, you've airily pointed to various references without offering any quotes or coherent explanations of their relevance, but refute my "narrow personal view" (and that of every Darwin scholar I know of) that Darwin abandoned Christianity in adulthood, and theism (for agnosticism) in middle age, and believed at best that God designed "general laws" rather than specific adaptive traits, you have not done.
Again, you simply substitute Fiske's interpretation of Darwin for Darwin's own views. This is bogus and completely illegitimate. You are a fraud. You've made one howling error after another (Gray was a "mentor" of Fiske, Variations was a "last work" of Darwin, Fiske knew Darwin better than Gray, Fiske was a Harvard "professor," Gray couldn't have been a Republican, it's "doubtful" that Gray ever taught Darwin, Darwin held a "Christian viewpoint" late in his life, Spencer (Fiske's REAL mentor!) and Huxley lead to "racism and totalitarianism" in the universities, Gray must have shared Darwin's confidentially divulged and unpublished theory with his Harvard colleagues, etc, etc, etc).
LOL! You can't be serious?! The entire Nazi racial philosophy was based on an idealist interpretation of race. Read Alfred Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century for God's sake, or Hitler's own Mein Kampf for that matter.
Oh, no! The theory of evolution requires much more puzzle work than is required by fusion.
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