Board index ‹ Creation and Evolution

[jimwalton]

> I don't think you understand how evolution works.

Please stop. I know how evolution works. Geez Louise. I had science class. I read voraciously. I've been to conferences and seminars. I know how evolution works, thank you.

> Imagine you lined up all your direct male ancestors back to back for the last 10 million years. You're human but the last creature in this queue won't be.

Of course. I know this.

> At some point in this queue, God decided where the dividing line between human and animal was.

Not necessarily deciding, but observing, just as any scientists would. It's a pretty tricky matter to be able to claim, "Now this one is human, whereas the previous one wasn't." Scientists have made those demarkations (hence the moniker homo sapiens), but they are fine lines of gradation rather than distinct categories.

It's like asking who was the first individual to speak modern English. There is no line of demarcation; instead, it's a gradient.

> If he pointed to a specific individual within this progression and said: 'here is the first human',

This is not what I was claiming. What I'm saying is that when human evolution reached a particular level of development, God intersected human history to reveal Himself.

[Papparazzi]

> A & E's original sin is characteristic of all humanity. The point of the text is "Any human would have done the same thing.

So you believe that god created humans with a sinful nature, placed them in an environment where he knew they would sin, and when they sinned, he punished them?

[jimwalton]

What I believe is that since God is uncreated, anything God created is not God. Therefore any created thing is not holy (separated out). Therefore anything God created is not perfect because it is not divine. Therefore anything God created is susceptible to sin, since only God Himself is not susceptible to sin. Therefore the possibility for sin had nothing to do with any environment, it pertained to their nature as being "not divine." Therefore sin is a choice, and they are accountable for their choices. God gave them every opportunity to make the right choice. When they sinned, it was their doing, not God's.

[Nebulator]

> What I'm claiming is that God uses natural systems and processes.

Are you claiming that the natural process would have led to some other species other than humans had God not interfered after the creation of the universe, or that he just set the ball rolling in the beginning of time?

> My point is the "special ability." Mutations that are beneficial are by far in the minority and yet seem to have a special power to bring about change that advances the organism in terms of survival and adaptation.

The special power isn't special or a power. It's just survival. A slightly longer beak means a bird can have a slightly better chance of getting more food in a flower. A slightly shorter beek wouldn't, so that gene would be less likely to be passed on. Not everyone pops out having the exact to the T length of any appendage as their parents.

> You're right that invoking God means not science, but excluding Him isn't science either.

Excluding the supernatural is science.

> As soon as you bring up the subject of God, you are no longer doing science (which pertains to the natural world), but rather theology or philosophy. We can neither include nor exclude God on the basis of science, because "God" is not within the realm of scientific comment.

i agree with this

> But in your comment you are ignoring that I also mentioned variation and complexity, which are scientific processes It's special pleading to choose only the piece you want to discredit my statement while ignoring the other pertinent points of my assertion.

you're right, sorry I shouldn't have done that. But variation and complexity doesn't give evidence to God/design. The more complex (to our understanding of 'complexity' as EVERYTHING is complex) something is doesn't equate to a God.

> The fine tuning of multiple dozens of cosmological constants points to something more than pure luck or chance as a result of an explosion (the Big Bang).

Why? And why is it luck? It's nutural. If any constant was different then there would be a different type of universe. Let's say there is a multi-verse and there are trillions of other universes. We wouldn't consider another universe that only had a 1^100000000000 chance of occurring to be lucky either. The tuning to a nth degree in one other direciton would have JUST as small of a chance of occurring. Something occurring that had a small chance of occurring doesn't mean design. It just is.

Please let me know if you understand what I am saying here because this is probably one of the more important points. If there are 100 people and only 1 gets a prize, each 1 of those other scenarios has the same % chance of getting the prize as any other. The fact that one got the prize doesn't indicate a miracle.

> It was always like that, even before we discerned it. It's not like the universe changed once we figured out math.

It wasn't always discernable to us because we didn't have a way to discern it previously without humans finding a way to try to explain. Most people still can't discern how the universe works, and we still don't know the vast majority of what there is to know about how the universe works. We know so much more than before the dropping of trusting the religious leaders and instead leaning on our skepticism.

> That the universe has so many elements of fine tuning points to an intelligent, purposeful source.

But "fine tuning" already indicates agency, so you're making the argument for yourself just in the wording. It just is, it doesn't mean someone fine tuned anything.

As for purposeful - what's the purpose then? To give glory to God? Then what? Is that it?

> That the universe has order instead of disorder (given its beginning) points to an ordering power.

Says who?

> That life seems gamed for improvement against so many odds points to a guiding intelligence.

What odds? Why would it be against odds, why would we assume that life/systems would not adapt? From what I read, life is inevitable in our system. We're finding amino acids on meteors.

> Science is insufficient to explain what caused the Big Bang.

It's insufficient for right now. But what we don't do is say "God did it" as a means to stop people trying to figure it out. Do you suggest that scientists stop trying to find out because you have the answer? If the answer to that question is no, then why even make the claim to begin with?

> It is insufficient to explain abiogenesis.

I've found a lot of sufficient answers about abiogenesis and they make a lot more sense than "god did it, supernatural". They don't have the answer to the "hey this is how it happened no matter what" but that's ok.

> It is insufficient to explain order rather than chaos.

i've seen good explanations. That doesn't mean the explanations are final.

> It is insufficient to explain how informational data (DNA) arose out of amino acids.

more sufficient than anything else we have, because once we find that out, future you will just move back the clock, that's how it has always been. That's why, i'm sure you've heard, that you worship/believe in the God of the Gaps.

> The fact is that theology is sufficient to explain all of these, and can explain them quite well. That's what the evidence points to.

What theology explains is whatever is the unkwown at any point in time. That gap of explanation has shrunk considerably over the last 200 years. There is no reason to believe that the theological explanations will change and be proven to be right.

[jimwalton]

> Are you claiming that the natural process would have led to some other species other than humans had God not interfered after the creation of the universe, or that he just set the ball rolling in the beginning of time?

We can never know the "what if." I found that it's always a matter of groundless and fruitless speculation. What I do believe, however, is that God is always involved in many aspects of life, so to wonder what would have been if there were no God is like asking what oceans would be like if there were no water.

I certainly do NOT believe, however, that He just set the ball rolling in the beginning of time. That's deism, and I find it a self-contradictory theology.

> The special power isn't special or a power. It's just survival.

I had a lunch conversation a year ago with Dr. Denis Alexander, a molecular biologist at Cambridge University. Among other things, some of what he said is, "genomic variations have advantages to succeed. It’s almost as if the system was rigged to succeed. It’s not neutral, but it’s not determined either. Although the changes in the organism are “random,” it’s both conservative and ordered. Natural selection is a process involving accepting adaptations and operates to preserve the organism."

I had a conversation at the same conference with Dr. Sarah Bodbyl Roels, professor of evolutionary biology in Colorado. She told me, "Beneficial mutations do come along rarely, but again, with mutations being surprisingly frequent in populations and having long periods of time to operate—it gets the job done!"

I read an article ("Mutation Rate Variation in Multicellular Eukaryotes: Causes and Consequence") by Charles F. Baer, Michael Miyamoto, and Dee Denver. In it they answered the question "Why do we keep evolving positively?" Their 4th reason was: "4. Mutations that directly affect the mutation rate have pleiotropic effects on fitness such that fitness is optimized at a non-0 mutation rate (known as the 'cost of fidelity')...In other words, the result is better than would be expected by chance."

I could keep quoting, but you get the idea. There is something special and powerful going on; it's not just survival.

> Excluding the supernatural is science.

Here you're just wrong. Studying the natural world is science. Science has its arena, which is not jurisprudence, art, economics, theology, philosophy, and many other things. But that is no comment on those other things.

> But variation and complexity doesn't give evidence to God/design.

Not necessarily, but they can logically point in the direction of a purposeful source, and scientifically they can point in the direction of something other than randomness going on.

> Why? And why is it luck?

The Big Bang was purportedly an eruption (an expansion) at an accelerated exponential expansion of tremendous power and velocity. We have to wonder what the odds are of arriving at an orderly universe characterized by life-supporting cosmological constants in such a condition of explosive chaos.

> If any constant was different then there would be a different type of universe.

The interesting thing is that if any constant were different, there would be no life.

> Something occurring that had a small chance of occurring doesn't mean design. It just is.

Correct, but we have to infer the most reasonable conclusion. As we look at the total picture, is the best inference, "Wow, it just is!" or "something more is going on here to have ended up the way we did. When we look at causality, logic, and probability, the more reasonable conclusion is in the direction of an intelligent and purposeful source, not in a random and chaotic one where we just got lucky.

> If there are 100 people and only 1 gets a prize, each 1 of those other scenarios has the same % chance of getting the prize as any other. The fact that one got the prize doesn't indicate a miracle.

Obviously. But we're trying to infer the most reasonable conclusion. Consider this analogy from Richard Swinburne:

"Suppose a madman kidnaps a victim and shut him in a room with a card-shuffling machine. The machine shuffles 10 packs of cards simultaneously and the draws a card from each pack and exhibits simultaneously the 10 cards. The kidnapper tells the victim that he will shortly set the machine to work and it will exhibit its first draw, but unless the draw consists of an ace of hearts from each of the 10 packs, the machine will simultaneously set off an explosion that will kill the victim, in consequence of which he will never see which cards the machine drew. The machine is then set to work, and to the amazement and relief of the victim the machine exhibits an ace of hearts drawn from each pack. The victim thinks this extraordinary fact needs an explanation in terms of the machine having been rigged in some way. But the kidnapper, who now reappears, casts doubt on the suggestion. 'It is hardly surprising,' he says, 'that the machine draws only aces of hearts. You could not possibly see anything else. For you would not be here to see anything at all if any other cards had been drawn.'

"But, of course, the victim is right and not the kidnapper. There is indeed something extraordinary in need of explanation in 10 aces of hearts being drawn. The fact that this peculiar order is a necessary condition of the draw being perceived at all makes what is perceived no less extraordinary and in need of explanation. The teleologist’s starting point is not that we perceive order rather than disorder, but that order rather than disorder is there. Maybe only if order were there could we know what is there, but that makes what is there no less ordinary and in need of explanation.

The universe is characterized by vast, all-pervasive temporal order, the conformity of nature to formula, recorded in the scientific laws formulated by men. These phenomena, like the very existence of the world, is clearly something “too big” for science to explain. If there is an explanation of the order of the universe, it can’t be a scientific one.

> But "fine tuning" already indicates agency, so you're making the argument for yourself just in the wording.

The occurrence of certain phenomena raises the probability of God's existence, if and only if it is more probable that those phenomena will occur if is a God than if there is not.

To show that it is unlikely that the phenomena would occur unless there were a God, one has to show that it is unlikely that there is any complete explanation of the phenomena (e.g., scientific explanation) other than one which involves God’s agency.

The boundary conditions of our universe and the laws of its evolution are of a very special kind which alone could lead to the evolution of intelligent life and in fact make it probable. It provides a good inductive argument for the existence of God.

The basic idea is that such fine-tuning is not at all surprising or improbable on theism: God presumably would want there to be life, and indeed intelligent life with which (whom) to communicate and share love. Of course this life could take many different forms (indeed, perhaps it has taken many forms). But it doesn’t seem at all improbable that God would want to create life, both human life and life of other sorts, and if he wanted to created human life in a universe at all like ours, he would have been obliged to fine-tune the constants. On the other hand, on the atheistic hypothesis according to which these constants have their values by chance (that is, those values are not the result of anyone’s choice or intention) it is exceedingly improbable that they would be fine-tuned for life. This seems to offer support for theism: given theism, fine-tuning is not at all improbable; given atheism, it is; therefore theism is to be preferred to atheism.

> As for purposeful - what's the purpose then? To give glory to God? Then what? Is that it?

The purpose is functionality and life. The universe is functional (gravity, electromagnetic, radio waves, etc.) and the Earth is able to support life.

>> That the universe has order instead of disorder (given its beginning) points to an ordering power.
> Says who?

Logic.

> What odds? Why would it be against odds, why would we assume that life/systems would not adapt?

That such order and constants would come from an explosive expansion is remarkable enough. That life would come from a fortuitous arrangement of amino acids is staggering. That life would evolve beneficially from mutations is astounding. The list goes on and on. If we are inferring the most reasonable conclusion, the odds of what we have coming from a dimensionless singularity are so staggeringly low as to be considered impossible.

You can't even get four full houses in four consecutive games of poker without someone being suspicious.

> From what I read, life is inevitable in our system.

I don't know what you've been reading, then. The number of components that have to be in place for life to be even a possibility are astoundingly high.

> We're finding amino acids on meteors.

The problem isn't their existence but their combination to create life and DNA. Let the number of amino acids equal n. Since there are 20 amino acids, the probability of getting the first one right is one in 20. The probability of getting the second one correct is (1/20)^2. The shortest functional protein reported to date has n equal to 20, while most have n equal to 100 or more. If we choose a number in between (50), we get (1/20)^50 equal to 10^-65, an infinitesimally small number.

If we take our probability estimate the next level, we recognize that a single functional protein is not likely to be biofunctional. That is, it would take more than one biomolecule to carry out life-sustaining processes. How many would we need? The best estimates are a minimum of 250. Taking this number as our protein count, for all of them to occur together, we will make the outlandish assumption that they are all relatively short (50 amino acids). Thus our probability to have a working cell appear in the primordial soup using this rather conservative approach would be (10^-65)^250. That number comes to around 10^-16300. Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, through their own calculations using their own particulars, arrived at 10^-40000. The bottom line is that the such a small probability "could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup." If these calculations are even remotely accurate, abiogenesis is a hopeless cause.

> But what we don't do is say "God did it" as a means to stop people trying to figure it out.

Neither do I. I say "God did it" because the evidence points more towards an intelligent, purposeful creator than to solely natural processes.

> Do you suggest that scientists stop trying to find out because you have the answer?

Not at all. Science is a fantastic discipline, and worth every ounce of energy and intellect we put into it.

> then why even make the claim to begin with?

Because that's where logic and the evidence leads us.

[Nebulator]

> What I do believe, however, is that God is always involved in many aspects of life, so to wonder what would have been if there were no God is like asking what oceans would be like if there were no water.

But that is what you are inferring. That the laws of physics would have meant that the universe would have evolved in a certain way, but then was interceded and changed the laws of physics so that life could form, or so that consciousness could arise.

But we know that it is not a 0.0% chance that life can form in the universe, you only state that the odds are incredibly low. If the odds are incredibly low that means that a divine intervention is not necessary.

> It’s almost as if the system was rigged to succeed.

This should have told you that it wasn't rigged. "almost as if" is just the perception, with that statement indicating that it has that perception but that is not the truth.

people use that terminology a lot to state things like "it was almost as if this virus came about so that I could now spend more time with my wife".

> Natural selection is a process involving accepting adaptations and operates to preserve the organism.

It preserves the organism, it does operate TO preserve. It just does.

> In other words, the result is better than would be expected by chance.

Yes, just like humans have longer penises than gorillas because we are social creatures where there is/was less pressure on having a longer penis over whoever was the most dominate male. That doesn't indicate chance. People invoke "chance" when there isn't a clear cut explanation, but when you study it you see that certain characteristics were more than likely to arise.

> There is something special and powerful going on; it's not just survival.

All your quotes seemed to me to indicate just survival.

> they can point in the direction of something other than randomness going on.

non-randomness does not equate to there being a God.

> We have to wonder what the odds are of arriving at an orderly universe characterized by life-supporting cosmological constants in such a condition of explosive chaos.

we don't have to wonder, and even in wondering/calculating the odds it doesn't matter. If the odds are above 0.0% chance then it doesn't matter.

> The interesting thing is that if any constant were different, there would be no life.

yes, why does that matter? There would still be trillions^trillionth power of different possibilities of universes, one of the possibilities was one that harbors life. It makes sense that we are in the one that harbors life. There could have been trillions of other universes that have popped up with no life popping up but a specific universe popping up doesn't equate to intelligent design, or it doesn't point to intelligent design in the universe that harbors life, only.

> not in a random and chaotic one where we just got lucky.

but why is this luck? Why couldn't it be lucky that there was a universe with no life? Is someone who was born into poverty and raped every day with zero happiness, kills themself out of depression/starvation to be lucky? The way you are using luck means that we should be grateful about the conditions of the universe.

> When we look at causality, logic, and probability,

you have to take out probability because probability doesn't matter. Causality is what? Logic is what?

> But we're trying to infer the most reasonable conclusion.

Yahweh is not the most reasonable conclusion. the most reasonable conclusion is "we don't know, so let's keep testing to find out".

> Consider this analogy from Richard Swinburne:

His conclusion that it requires an explanation is just not true. What if he picked a 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 7, 7, 9, jack, queen. The chances of him picking that specific deck was also extremely low, but he still picked it. Just because you got a perceived desired result doesn't equate to requiring an explanation for why they picked that order even though the chances were low.

You're working backwards from "this is exactly how I like things" to being "because I like the way things are, and that there was a small chance of this happening, then this needs an explanation"

> is clearly something 'too big' for science to explain. If there is an explanation of the order of the universe, it can’t be a scientific one.

We can keep getting close, but we will never get there because to completely understand the universe you would have to have all the energy of the universe to explain.

[jimwalton]

>But that is what you are inferring.

It's not what I'm inferring. You're misinterpreting me.

> That the laws of physics would have meant that the universe would have evolved in a certain way, but then was interceded and changed the laws of physics so that life could form, or so that consciousness could arise.

No, what I'm saying is that God was always involved. It wasn't heading in one direction and He changed it. He guided the process from the Bang, and is still involved.

> But we know that it is not a 0.0% chance that life can form in the universe, you only state that the odds are incredibly low. If the odds are incredibly low that means that a divine intervention is not necessary.

How do you know it's not a 0% chance? The only universe we know is our universe, and the only life we know is our life here on Earth, though there are hints of possible life elsewhere. What I said was the odds were so minuscule that it can be considered to be impossible, which is true.

> This should have told you that it wasn't rigged.

Oh my gosh. What I've said repeatedly is that it's as if the system was gamed all along to engender and support life.

> non-randomness does not equate to there being a God.

Oh my gosh, of course it doesn't. But the evidence points in His direction if we are inferring the most reasonable conclusion. We are dealing in probabilities, not certainties. We are reasoning abductively.

> we don't have to wonder,

We do have to wonder because science has an insufficient explanation. It's still on the list of "things science can't adequately explain."

>> The interesting thing is that if any constant were different, there would be no life.

> yes, why does that matter?

It matters because it points to the probability of an intelligent source.

>> not in a random and chaotic one where we just got lucky.

> but why is this luck?

Because your case is built on, "Well, we're here, aren't we?" If we had a bag of 10 billion white ping pong balls and one black one, and I blindfolded you and told you to dive in a pick the black one, you'd have a 1 in 10B chance of getting it. Suppose you did. Wow, lucky, but you got it. Then I tossed it back in and said, "Do it again." The universe has done this a million times over to arrive at where we are, and yet you seem to think this could easily be expected.

> you have to take out probability because probability doesn't matter. Causality is what? Logic is what?

Of course probability matters. If 20 amino acids have to line up in the right order to create a protein, then probability matters.

Causality means that everything that has a beginning has a cause outside of itself because nothing can self-generate out of non-existence. The universe had a beginning, and so we have to discuss the probable causal mechanism outside of nature.

Logic? We have to use our brains to assess whether the universe could self-generate out of nothing, or if it makes more sense that there was a causal mechanism. We have to assess whether all these indicators of an intelligence was responsible for these narrow parameters of cosmological constants or whether it was a fortuitous occurrence. We have to evaluate whether informational systems arose on their own or derived from previous informational systems (an intelligent cause). We have to ponder whether our consciousness derived from other conscious or arose by itself, whether personality came from other personality or arose by itself. In all cases it's more logical to reason that an effect came from a first cause outside of nature, that order came from order, personality from personality, information from information, and consciousness from consciousness. These are more logical conclusions than that they all came from time + matter + chance.

> Yahweh is not the most reasonable conclusion. the most reasonable conclusion is "we don't know, so let's keep testing to find out".

I agree on more testing, but YHWH is clearly the more reasonable conclusion over naturalism.

> You're working backwards from "this is exactly how I like things" to being "because I like the way things are, and that there was a small chance of this happening, then this needs an explanation"

No I'm not. Don't try to blow off what I'm saying by making deprecatory assumptions. That's a straw man fallacy.

> We can keep getting close, but we will never get there because to completely understand the universe you would have to have all the energy of the universe to explain.

Which is what I'm saying. Science has an insufficient explanation, whereas theism has sufficient. If we are inferring the most reasonable conclusion, theism wins the hand.

[Super Flood]

> It's more like he put the glass on the highest shelf and told them it was dangerous to climb the shelves, it would only be to their harm if they broke the glass, and they'd be better to leave it alone, but they climbed anyway. Remember, the serpent didn't break the glass, the people did.

I thought humanity was the glass in your analogy. It was perfect but could be broken by an exogenous force. You said we were “vulnerable”, which means “susceptible to attack or harm.” I figured you were implying there was some external evil force, like Satan or something.

> So if you bought a new set of china and your teenager dropped a whole stack and broke them, you would blame the manufacturer and demand a refund? Remind me not to let you into my store—you'll blame me for breakage that's your fault!

That’s not equivalent to what I said. A better analogy:

Suppose there is a mother named Alice who starts dating a guy named Bob, who she knows has gotten into trouble for selling drugs to teenagers and is a guy who is constantly trying to lead others astray. She tells her kids to never accept drugs from anyone, but she also introduces Bob to them and the kids take drugs from Bob and become addicted. Does Alice have any responsibility for introducing her children to a drug dealer or is it all the kids’ fault?

[jimwalton]

> Suppose there is a mother named Alice

Yes, Alice is partially at fault, but the analogy is misguided and inadequate because God didn't introduce A&E to Satan. God didn't bring the serpent into their orbit. God was not complicit in the event, as Alice was.

[Papparazzi]

> Not necessarily deciding, but observing, just as any scientists would. It's a pretty tricky matter to be able to claim, "Now this one is human, whereas the previous one wasn't."

The way you phrase it, it seems that you think that god was a passive observer like a scientist and that the evolution of humans was just an accident? Did god not actively create humans by using evolution?

> Scientists have made those demarkations (hence the moniker homo sapiens), but they are fine lines of gradation rather than distinct categories.

If god used evolution to create humans, did he not decide what the features/characteristics of humanity would be before he created humans? How is god observing and god deciding any different?

My point is that if god created us using evolution, then god's dividing line between humans and animals is completely arbitrary. This is because there were creatures in the distant past that looked and behaved like humans, some of which god considered 'animal' and others which god considered human. These humans and 'animals' were the same species so they interbred with one-another. Do you agree with me up to this point?

Also do you believe that:

1. god used evolution to give us our general psychological characteristics, feelings, and behavioral traits i.e. he gave us our human nature
2. this nature is such that it is impossible for us to avoid sinning?
3. that we deserve to be punished for sin?