Evolution through the Back Door

Various | 6/15/2003 | Alamo-Girl

[Doctor Stochastic]

If we can take a leaf from a tree and date it as being 10,000 years old, yet it was just removed and is still green, then how can we rely on this?

Carbon dating does not work on living beings; this has been known (and publicized) since carbon dating was introduced. Anyone who makes such a claim is simply being dishonest.

[Gargantua]

An amazing compilation of analyses, not to mention the genius (if not pure wisdom) needed to probe so deeply, thouroughly, or thoughtfully into an area of such gray matter (pun intended).

The only ointment on this fly is that author must by definition attempt to divine the Divine; to plumb the depth and breadth and scope of God-ness, which (as mortals) we are incapable of by 1:10,000,000,000th (or more), but nonetheless a task which only the most brilliant and humble are driven to undertake with sincere conviction.

That said, an amazing introspection and deserving of a level of colloquy I doubt you'll find available from most here on FreeRepublic... with a couple possible exceptions... :-)

God bless you. For what it's worth, you have earned my eternal respect. You're one surprising Alamo Girl.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the kudos and encouragement but most especially for the blessing! May God abundantly bless you as well!

I don’t believe it is possible to ”divine the Divine” - but Truth is revealed as we walk with the Lord:

But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed [them] unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. - I Cor 2:9-10

When anything I have posted strikes anyone as spiritually wise, or rings true to their Spirit – I rejoice because that means those particular words were not my own.

[unspun]

Have you jumped in? The water's warm in the deep end. Of course I may not surface until folks are out of the pool already.

Alamo-Girl, can I get the books-on-tape version of this, for my commute? ;-`

[Alamo-Girl]

LOLOL! I was shocked when I heard by Freep-mail that the article was 19 pages long. Sounds like I "over-achieved" in providing source links and excerpts. Sigh...

My apologies for the length of it.

[Consort]

...that the article was 19 pages long.

19... A Louis Farrakhan magic number.

[unspun]

My apologies for the length of it.

No apologies necessary. That's life....

[connectthedots]

On second thought, maybe the title is a good one. It certainly will cause many people to check out the thread. It also counterbalances the complexity of the argument and lends a bit of humor; not a bad thing in this case.

[Alamo-Girl]

Jeepers! Then I must do something to change the length of it. Thanks for your post!

[Alamo-Girl]

Great catch! Thank you! If you do think of something better though, please let me know.

[connectthedots]

Those who are threatened by the concept of evolution are insecure in their religious faith.

Those who are secure in their faith in the Creator of the universe are not threatened by the religion of evolution. Your implication that Christians who reject macro-evolution has no basis in fact or logic.

[BlazingArizona]

All I have to say on the subect is that sp long as ID advocates are willing to formulate their hypothesis in testable form, as Dembski did, then why not test it? That's how science works.

[martianagent]

There were a series of symposia at the Wistar Institute at which a number of the world's best mathematicians tried to explain how things really are to a number of the world's worst evolutionists. It was pretty one-sided.

[djf]

TY. Bookmark. Will read the article when I have say, two or three extra hours. I have given evolution a great deal of thought. The most difficult thing I see is not molecules that can form duplicates of themselves, it's two items in particular: The cell membrane, and the nucleus.

[Rudder]

Check out my post No. 82.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for the link and the heads up! That is a very interesting website; I'll no doubt be looking for the full articles that were written about those meetings!!!

[djf]

Little bit of content there, eh? My initial observations. I am somewhat surprised it quotes David Albert, his book "Quantum Mechanics and Experience" was somewhat trashed by the community, although I found it a very refreshing way of looking at things, as he delves into the epistemology of the whole thing. I know if I stick a pin in my arm, it hurts, so I exist, yet I am not able to grab or cling to any solipstic theory. I'm not smart enough to create the universe. There are many more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my imagination.

But it seems patently obvious to me that before the BB, there must have been laws. Remember high school math and truth tables? The universe, time, space, matter could not exist without the CONCEPT of truth tables, whether they are writen down or not is somewhat moot. Neither do I ascribe to the current anthropomorphic view that we just happen to be here at what just happens to be the right time. There might be life on Europa, a moon covered by water orbiting Jupiter, lots of energy there because of tidal effects of Jupiter. I wonder if Europans think life is impossible on that distant blue planet, was too close to the sun...
Finally, I have done some siple statistical mechanics type projections about what might happen in one mole of H2O. Turns out the numbers you start getting are so fantastically large, that one is forced to reject the hypothesis that "everything that can happen will happen". But the numbers tell another story... even though the universe seems old (as we measure things) it seems in fact to be quite young! Oh well, will keep eading later.

[Lady Eileen]

bump

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for sharing your insight and your analysis! I am looking forward to more of your musings!!!

WRT Albert, I wonder if the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy wanted to capture the despair of the issue by coining Albert's phrasing? (The other descriptions I have read were so dry the point could be missed, which is why I selected that one.)

[Nebullis]

You've listed a very small body of work padded with comments and letters to the editor and published largely in the field of information theory. That supports my assertion very well.

The Haken review can be found in Nature (1993)362,509. It's titled "Misinformation" and points out some of the ways Hockey misrepresents biology.