Survival of the Fondest - Love Defies Darwin and Defeats the Devil

This is a short article (of which I posted about a fourth since I do not have any connection to the website nor permission to copy their whole articles).

It is a recent message that I think is one of the best philosophical or faith-based arguments against evolution (as an explanation of the origins of human life).

I went to an EXTREMELY rich-kid school.

You don’t need generations to see TToE in action.

At my college, the beautiful and brilliant people found the beautiful and brilliant people who had beautiful kids who went to the same schools and ran in the same social circles who married and had brilliant and beautiful kids who go together and had brilliant and beautiful kids.

And that is observable in my lifetime. Look at Trump. His kids are brilliant and beautiful because he chose brilliant and beautiful mates.

This article really doesn’t say much. People fall in love for all kinds of reasons. But probabilities are they will find attractive pro-survival traits which will enhance the species. Strength, intelligence, power.

Attraction precedes love for the most part.

Darwin wins this particular argument.

My purpose in life is to be of maximum service to God and my fellows

The blogger uses Darwin and Darwinism as synonyms for atheism and the devil. This seems to be a trend among creationists.

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If Darwinian theorists are right, then all forms of love and virtue are essentially genetic illusions. They don’t exist outside the human psyche. Which means they don’t really exist. Love is fundamentally a utilitarian mirage created by our genes that natural selection determined as among the most effective means to ensure of our genetic survival.

Guys like Descartes and Hume thought that we can just do well enough with a utilitarian life. In other words, we don't need God and we don't really need any manifestation of Him like love and virtue.

Problem is that we are more than our utilitarian part. It's like saying we only need a brain and the heart and soul we can just ignore. That is tantamount to becoming schizophrenic and without our hearts and the ability to love we can not operate as humans.

Good article.

“Attraction precedes love for the most part. Darwin wins this particular argument.”

The article is describing self-sacrificial love. Self-sacrificial love - the kind Jesus displayed when He died for the sins of the world - does not propagate itself through a genetic selection process.

The problem with TToE is mainly the attempt by many to make it into the theory of everything. It is the multi-level marketing scam of science. Its explanatory power is limited to a narrow range of changes within specific categories of living things.

There are endless faulty assumptions used to justify extrapolating minor observable changes into the claim that this theory explains the origin of all life forms traceable back to a singular original life form.

But things like love and morality are not even within the purview of science. Attempts to use it as a moral guide result in things like social darwinism which has treated genocide as morally acceptable because... evolution.

“At my college, the beautiful and brilliant people found the beautiful and brilliant people who had beautiful kids”

You cite this an example of TToE, but the logic here is problematic. While it is certainly observable that genetic flaws can diminish intellectual capacity and beauty (as subjective as it is), the extent of human intelligence is definitely not purely genetic. And there are many geniuses and gorgeous people who have come from questionable genetic stock.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And in the example you cited, it is arbitrary. Specific genetic traits that cause some to be beautiful and others not so much are particularly hard to quantify. Skin pigmentation, for example, is genetically determined for the most part. But whether someone is light- or dark-complected does not determine whether they are attractive or unattractive. Or, if otherwise, this has to do with cultural influences rather than genetic ones. (That is, genetics would only have the ability to determine beauty to the same extent that they determine what the beholder finds to be beautiful because beauty is not an absolute, measurable attribute.) Similarly, height has an arbitrary relationship with beauty. And on and on with whatever specific set of genetic trains you might observe.

This means that your logic is circular. You are essentially arguing that beauty exists because it exists. And this happens to also be one of the fatal flaws of TToE as well. Specifically, TToE beyond the very limited scope that I have stated and supported it for, is unscientific. And the reason is easily demonstrated. If we take any attribute of any living things, it can be accounted for by TToE. Why do people love? TToE. Why do people hate? TToE. Why do some people love chocolate? TToE. Why do some people hate chocolate? Because they are crazy, have broken taste buds, and TToE.

But seriously, there is no attribute that any living thing could have which would cause the proponents of TToE to say, “Wow, this disproves TToE.” And this means that TToE is unscientific because it can not be falsified. It really is that simple. Without limiting the scope of TToE to what it is useful for, it becomes this MLM monstrosity, this TOE, this dogma to which all others must bow.

Another flaw is the dependence on an endless supply of time within a constructive and safe environment. How is it that only progressive changes have supposedly happened in order to make modern man the pinnacle of TToE? Why is it unlikely that evolution would produce simple life forms such as viruses or bacteria that would cause an extinction-level event every few hundred thousand years? Or at least every million or so years? Do viruses and bacteria only thrive when intelligent species survive? Do their mutations occur more slowly than complex organisms so that such mutations, ones that are deadly to those complex organisms, can never catch up with the adaptive capabilities of the complex organisms? Wouldn’t complex organisms adapting more slowly provide a competitive advantage to lower life forms to kill off the more complex ones which are not required for the survival of the simpler ones?

How does evolution stop destructive radiation from penetrating our atmosphere and killing us? Did TToE cause this? Did it keep our atmosphere in a stasis as part of its survival mechanism? Or were we just lucky that it lasted for billions of years?

Are we also lucky that the earth has never been gobbled up by some larger body during life’s trek down through the eons? Or did TToE cause that too?

And this brings me back to your argument over beauty and intelligence. Some of us can see intelligence in the design of creation. We see the wisdom of the Creator. We also see beauty in the Creation. And there are theological explanations (rather than attempting to misuse science with its limited explanatory powers on such subjects) for why some things within the natural realm are neither aesthetic nor intelligent.

The problem with your side of the debate is that you have not even accepted that the argument (including your side of it) is a philosophical rather than scientific one. And this is because there is an a priori assumption on the part of TToE proponents that science has explanatory power about things that are outside of its domain, and the like assumption that things like divine revelation encroach upon the supposed realm of science.

TToE is ONLY A THEORY. I realize there have been endless debates around the “only a theory” meme. But they are unresolved simply because those on the wrong side of the argument will not accept the FACT that it is only a theory. Calling TToE a fact is like stating that it is a FACT that I like diet Pepsi more than diet Coke. Sure there is a TToE, that’s a fact. But it is not itself a fact or even a set of facts. Scientific facts are restricted to things that are observable and measurable. The explanations of these “facts” are what we call theories. Outside of this we have facts of law and facts of history. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln is a historical fact, not a scientific one. Yet it is demanded that the theoretical suppositions and conjectures of TToE be treated on the same level as direct observations... no actually as more reliable than direct observation. That’s not science. It’s dogma.

And if you can see the logic of this argument, it is a thing of beauty and a sign of intelligence - things God gave you when He designed you.

>>TToE is ONLY A THEORY. I realize there have been endless debates around the “only a theory” meme. But they are unresolved simply because those on the wrong side of the argument will not accept the FACT that it is only a theory<<

I am not going to refight the CREVO wars here. The fact you posted this statement means you are ignorant about science. You do not know what a Scientific Theory is (hint: it is NOT a guess all grown up).

We cannot discuss this subject because it is like discussing trigonometry with someone who doesn’t know math or 3VL with someone who doesn’t know the Relational Model.

Good day.

“The fact you posted this statement means you are ignorant about science.”

No. It illustrates the total failure of those who conflate scientism with science.

As I said before, the debate isn’t even about science. It is about philosophy. And the fact that you can not tell the difference is a very good indicator you are a practitioner of scientism.

“You do not know what a Scientific Theory is (hint: it is NOT a guess all grown up).”

You need to quit listening to voices if you want to claim I am confusing a theory with a guess. That’s either a straw man or a delusion on your part.

You do not know what a scientific theory is. A hypothesis does not become a theory if it is not falsifiable.

The theory that speciation results from adaptation by natural selection is well supported. Because it is not directly observable generally but is testable, it is theoretical.

Adaptation can also occur as the result of artificial selection. Therefore, some speciation is likely the result of artificial selection. This includes domesticated animals, including commensal, prey, and targeted for draft groups.

Abiogenesis has never been observed. The only thing remotely resembling it is the supposed creation of life in a lab, but this has so far been a genetic manipulation of existing life. And if it actually ever does occur it may only support Intelligent Design rather than natural, unaided abiogenesis.

The broader assumptions of TToE include LUCA which is not observable, testable, falsifiable, or defensible. It is pure speculation.

Dawkins claims that any modern animal in the Precambrian would falsify it. But that simply isn’t true. First, the fossil index is the primary dating tool for geologic time. Second, all so-called “predictions” to support common descent are tautological. If my magic is real, then the sun will come up tomorrow. Ta-da. They are not falsifiable because there is no alternative being compared. The historical record that God created life in a certain order is not considered because it is not a scientific theory. But then again, neither was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

If we were to apply this supposed scientific rigor to the history of the computer, for example, we would find that all software has a common descent. We would have to throw out the historicity of this claim. But we could make many sorts of wild “predictions” which would confirm our own scientific version of history. But it still would not be history.

The existence of life and even the universe itself is obvious evidence of a Creator. There are areas of truth and learning that have NOTHING to do with scientific theory. If we were driving down a road and observed a turtle on top of a fence post, we would not use a scientific theory to assess how the turtle got there. We would not assume that the turtle was unique and had climbing or flying capabilities. We would not assume that there was a recent flood that we missed but which allowed the turtle to swim and come to rest on the fence post. No, common sense would immediately tell us that some person played a cruel joke on the turtle by putting him where he could not get down.

Unfortunately, practitioners of scientism throw common sense out the window.

We can observe species that have remained relatively unchanged through remarkable periods of apparent time.

We can also observe adaptation occurring at a much more rapid rate than TToE suggests. And yet we do not observe the degree of speciation that would be necessary to support the broader claims.

The data which supports speciation also supports, obviously, that certain species share common ancestors. However, it does not follow that there must be a universal common ancestor. Species may also merge by hybridization or obligate endosymbiosis. None of the supposed tests of UCD can distinguish the results if all life descended from a variety of original life forms.

None of these “tests” produce any results that would not be expected if a multitude of original life forms were created simultaneously. And all of the genetic evidence supports a universal common Creator who, like a good computer programmer, practiced reusability of code.

TToE has itself evolved into an MLM monstrosity which equivalates organizational convenience with scientific rigor. It is nothing more to science than the Dewey Decimal system is to libraries. And speculations about the origins of man based on TToE are like trying to validate the contents of a book based on the number it has been assigned by the Library of Congress.

The most important questions of life, science can not answer. Practitioners of scientism actually think scientific theories are foundational to truth. It’s the other way around.

Saying “God did it” is no more of an assault on Occam’s razor than Darwin’s universal descent which he inferred from analogy, in his own words.

The possibility of there even being science is because of God. He created order from chaos. He arranged time so that we can discover principles through causality. He placed the moon with a size, mass, and orbit that are too precise to be a coincidence. He built the earth to sustain life. Ignoring this is like believing in flying turtles. We don’t need science to know where man came from. Science can never solve the riddle of human existence or our purpose for existing because that is outside of the domain of science.

Yeah, I said it. Science doesn’t work that way.

>>Yeah, I said it. Science doesn’t work that way.<<

That is a lot of philosophical nonsense.

It also merely begs the question.

Have a good day.

“That is a lot of philosophical nonsense.”

Science is predicated upon philosophy. It does not surprise me that a follower of scientism would not know this.

Einstein: “I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today—and even professional scientists—seem to me like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is—in my opinion—the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth.”

Einstein: “When I think about the ablest students whom I have encountered in my teaching, that is, those who distinguish themselves by their independence of judgment and not merely their quick-wittedness, I can affirm that they had a vigorous interest in epistemology.”

It’s not nonsense. It is important to know how to know.

And, as my tagline advises, you can’t learn this until you first realize you don’t know it yet. That’s the first step of learning.

This article was presenting a philosophical argument for creation. You dismissed it and my comments because you elevate science to something beyond its domain. Science will never provide you with truth.

>>And, as my tagline advises, you can’t learn this until you first realize you don’t know it yet. That’s the first step of learning.<<

You are digging your ignorance hole deeper. I have never seen anyone spend so many words explaining why they do not understand the first thing about a subject.

I suggest you cease before you find you are in China.

Really — as a fellow FReeper I urge you to stop. Else your words will be used to show just how little “right wingers” know about science.

Have a blessed day and I am done here