Evolution is Unscientific

[stranger]

So I got to digging into all of the examples on the list, and one by one I was able to cross off *all* but one example as not demonstrating speciation. Adaptation I could easily go along with, but adaptation is not - in and of itself - speciation. The only example I could not refute was a cross between a radish and a cabbage. Probably not particularly remarkable to a non-gardener, but the two are not even in the same family, it would be like a dog mating *successfully!* with a cat. What came of the union according to the specific write up, was unable to reproduce with either of the parent stocks. That, by definition, would clearly be speciation.

Interesting, Juan. I lack the intellectual capacity to understand most of the complex matters discussed here on interfaith, but am not lacking in imagination. Speciation is definitely one of the subjects my feeble mind would like to explore in more detail. Are we to look at the product of these sorts of unions as a shortcoming of the union, or perhaps as something new altogether?

Shortcomings are often in the eyes of the beholder... Seen from one's comfortable perspective, or the perspective of orthodox science, one might consider that viewpoint as having no equal, let alone superior. But when at last it dawns on science that there is a bigger picture, then ooops! Everything we thought we knew goes out the window. Science must never lose it's imagination, it's desire for exploration, even in issues that go far and beyond it's known orthodoxy.

 

[RJM]

God works by synchronisity, imo. The universe only exists because I perceive it. If I die and there's nothing else, does the universe die with me -- if I'm not here to perceive it?

I was clumsy with words. I meant it as the solipsist view: The universe exists only in my perception. If when I die it all goes black and ceases to exist then, for me, the universe effectively ceases to exist when I do? Something along those lines of reasoning?

 

[wil]

Cannot the awesome creator force/first cause, permeate the mechanism of abiogenesis and evolution? The more we learn about the mechanism, the more in awe and wonder we must stand?

The TOE. I don't believe in G!d as an entity. I believe in the principle of G!d and G!d as principle.

 

[RJM]

The TOE. I don't believe in G!d as an entity. I believe in the principle of G!d and G!d as principle.

What distinguishes principle from no principle?
What is the parameter of principle as a 'set'?

 

[RJM]

The principle of nature seems to be entropy: everything is always breaking down to the lowest level of energy. Death is the standard destination of everything, including the universe.

In that sense Life can be regarded as a temporary anti-entropic phenomenon. Because entropy is calculated over the whole of the universe, individual pockets (sets) of apparent anti-entropy, such as life, are still subject to the entropy of the entire greater set (the universe) which contains them.

I always regard the principle of overall entropy excluding the so-called temporary anti-entropy of life as a bit of a mathematical cop-out, really. It seems unfair, lol. The organization of the universe, and of Life within it, clearly seems anti-entropic? Why should energy ever organize itself, instead of dissipating? Well – ok, it has happened that way in our universe, and no denying.

There can be no percentage chance calculation from the fact of a single occurrence, so of course it's not possible to draw a chance statistic from the fact a thing happened once. But after 1.5 billion years of prokaryote bacterial life on early earth, something happened which had never happened even once in all that time before, and which has never happened again in all the following 2.7 billion years – not even once -- although the opportunity has continued to exist for it to happen again and again, zillions of times over.

The ’miracle’ event was when a bacteria combined with an archea by endobiosis to give rise to the ‘modern’ eukaryotic cell. It happened only once, and without it there would be no life higher than bacteria on earth. Prokaryote bacteria and archea continue to swarm daily in staggering astronomical numbers, but they have never even once again combined by endobiosis. It was a one-off, once only occurrence in the entire 4.2 billion year history of life on earth.

This is fully accepted as current mainstream science, to the best of my knowledge.

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

 

[wil]

Sort of like G!d or 'defund police' In principle the words don't convey the fullness and extent of the meaning of the word as I know/perceive them.

The TOE....we have macro and micro physics which each contain laws which we can't use in the other. We have this gravity stuff, and math laws, and a connundrum when we try to put them all together...Some praise or blame G!d for things... I can't wrap my head around that word because of the old white guy in the sky that preachers and teachers evoked is stuck in my head, So I don't believe G!d created anything...any more than rain creates the ocean...one drop at ta time from every river...rain doesn't create it..rain does what gravity informs it. there is are underlying principles at work that allow all we see to have happened. Just as we don't understand G!d...or make it something un understandable (always was, always is, all knowing, all watching, knows the hairs on your head, the stars in the sky, the time of your demise). We make an invisible being...that punishes and rewards on some arbitrary rules which we continue to change based on our current whims. (views on gays, slavery, prostitution)

I don't know what the TOE is, what the underlying all encompassing principles that allow abiogenisis, big bang etc. Like you believers, I have no proof, oher than that which I perceive, (poof our universe disappears rjm) The TOE/principle like G!d....like 2+2, like gravity...always is, always was....like bacteria....we just didn't know it, didnt understand it...till we did. Ya'll believers are blessed to have all your answers and understand them all, in each of your hundreds of thousands of ways. I think the scientific secularists are blessed to know what they know and accept they don't know it all and continue to strive for more discovery, and only have issues when they allow perceived knowledge to get in the way of new understanding. Me? I don't know anything it often appears...I am so far hehind most in alll aspects....with my words and thought and life....I just ramble....he ideas in my head blown by the wind from the ideas whirling off these pages and others. While the blible and words of Jesus are instruental in my thought process, I believe them to be naturally, acceptably warped by the writers and editors, and compilers perceptions of reality, and struggle with using incomplete ideas and definitions which the words of our languages try to convey meanings they are incapable of... But I think I could, based on what I know, find that foundation in Mohamed and the Quran, or the Gita, or the Tao, or thousands of others inspired texts written by folks with the same issues we are having today.

If this makes no sense to you that is understandable....as I am simply failing at describing (for me) the currently indescribable (for me) with an insufficient communication tool (for me).

 

[RJM]

poof our universe disappears rjm

Not with a bang, but with a whimper; it just very gradually fades away *

Ya'll believers are blessed to have all your answers and understand them all

I cannot count myself onto the list

incomplete ideas and definitions which the words of our languages try to convey meanings they are incapable of...

Yes ...

*TS Elliot: The Hollow Men
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

 

[juantoo3]

Science must never lose it's imagination, it's desire for exploration, even in issues that go far and beyond it's known orthodoxy.

Bingo! And I think when you find someone truly immersed in some scientific discipline, if they are honest, will tell you much the same.

 

[juantoo3]

The principle of nature seems to be entropy: everything is always breaking down to the lowest level of energy. Death is the standard destination of everything, including the universe.

And yet life springs mysteriously and miraculously out of death. Quite the contradiction, but it tells me that entropy is only half of the story. I see elements explaining this in the very little I have seen of Jewish Kabala Tree of Life that hint in this direction, birth and death coexisting as two sides of a coin - so to speak.

One point of consideration...if entropy is all, shouldn't the numerous galaxies be slowing down? Why are they speeding up as they move away from each other? (Dark Energy vs Dark Matter)

 

[juantoo3]

In principle the words don't convey the fullness and extent of the meaning

If Vajra taught me nothing else, I learned the lesson of the menu and the meal, the finger and the moon.

Have you finished your rice gruel? Wash your bowl.

(I've long been a bit of a glutton...)

 

[juantoo3]

Cannot the awesome creator force/first cause, permeate the mechanism of abiogenesis and evolution? The more we learn about the mechanism, the more in awe and wonder we must stand?

I think what we are beginning to understand of subatomic particle theory points in this general direction. But I have to agree with Wil, this isn't the Old Grey Beard reclining on a cloud, no matter how much the atheists and anti-Christianity crowd want to use that straw man. Humanity has grown in the 500 plus years since (correction) Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel.

In my mind I see what can be called "G-d" as underlying or permeating all existence, but not in a manipulative sense. "He" (if you will) set the laws of Nature in motion, but those laws are inviolable. Gravity isn't going to stop, and the Moon isn't going to reverse course, just because a puny human asks for a miracle. (Angelic intervention however, may be an altogether different matter - and again Kabala points in this direction, but again the laws of Nature are inviolable)

 

[RJM]

Spirit weaves nature. Nature is the shadow play of Plato's cave. Light is the shadow of God. We cannot perceive beyond what our natural senses allow, even with ingenious scientific instruments and telescopes and microscopes and listening devices designed to extend their range? Imo

But we are Spirit too. We are sometimes receptive -- through a glass darkly -- to movements and vibrations from beyond this timespace dimension where we are fixed by nature of our animal/material form?

Spiritual laws may seem contrary to natural laws. But the set of nature is contained within the greater set of Spirit, like a room in a house. Scriptures and teachers attempt to explain Spiritual law to natural minds. 'My Father's house has many mansions.' Own thoughts ...

edited

 

[stranger]

The laws of Nature are inviolable except through miracle. Inviolable laws cloak the divine. The divine reveals itself through miracle (miracle emerges from impossibility). Can miracle ever be a bad thing?

 

[Thomas]

... this isn't the Old Grey Beard reclining on a cloud ...

Certainly a troublesome image, but always symbolic language, and a viable in that regard, we just shouldn't get too literal about it.

Humanity has grown in the 500 plus years since DaVinci painted the Sistine Chapel.

Not sure we've changed that much, just some of us got more skeptical? Take the 'DaVinci Code' ...

"He" (if you will) set the laws of Nature in motion, but those laws are inviolable.

I see it rather more 'softly', the laws are there, like software routines, but miracles can occur like ripples through the fabric ...

 

[juantoo3]

I see it rather more 'softly', the laws are there, like software routines, but miracles can occur like ripples through the fabric ...

Pending how cognizant this underlying fabric, this subatomic lattice, is.

There are still angels to handle the "light work."

 

[RJM]

To me it's still a powerful image of the awesome effect upon man and nature of the divine touch of that single finger of God. Could be like the Big Bang, almost?

 

[juantoo3]

Spirit weaves nature. Nature is the shadow play of Plato's cave. Light is the shadow of God. We cannot perceive beyond what our natural senses allow, even with ingenious scientific instruments and telescopes and microscopes and listening devices designed to extend their range?

It can be difficult to design instruments to read natural emanations we don't even know exist.

We can read electricity; voltage, amperage and impedance. We can gauge the speed of the wind, and watch where it comes from and where it goes to. We can dissect "air" into the constituent gasses. We can image the electro-chemical roadmap of the human mind...but we can't use that to state emphatically that the mind is actually thinking or reasoning (not without external experiential and/or corroborating evidence) - we can legitimately surmise a person is thinking, but we can't yet read their thoughts or dreams (mechanically). We now have supercolliders that crash beams of energy together so we can watch the different pieces fly off and try to understand what we see...like the Higgs Boson.

This allows me an opportunity to broach a subject that recently crossed my path after a long hiatus - "EVP."

Electronic voice phenomenon - Wikipedia

Yet another "pseudoscience" on the fringe, but I think there may be some merit. Those quick to dismiss usually have turf to defend, and this has potential to impede on the boundaries. Like many things we allude to understanding (when in fact we don't know quite as much as we lead ourselves to believe), this is difficult to verify or take alone at face value. Still, it is another means of exploration that has potential *if* corroborating or more exacting measurements can be developed.

 

[juantoo3]

To me it's still a powerful image of the awesome effect upon man and nature of the divine touch of that single finger of God. Could be like the Big Bang, almost?

Menus and meals. This is the danger of iconography, and I suspect why it was installed as one of the Ten Commandments. Thoughtful people may grasp the symbolism, but less learned people may be (are!) apt to take the symbol at face value and cease more in-depth pursuits. Historically this is compounded by those factions that discourage more in-depth pursuits and rest upon the iconography as the unassailable essence itself in order to control the masses and the message.

 

[wil]

less learned people may be (are!) apt to take the symbol at face value and cease more in-depth pursuits.

Which makes it pretty stupid to use in Sunday school for kids or new converts ...

Hey let's start out with big lies and warped images and mistruths you may spend decades failing to erase.

 

[stranger]

Menus and meals. This is the danger of iconography, and I suspect why it was installed as one of the Ten Commandments. Thoughtful people may grasp the symbolism, but less learned people may be (are!) apt to take the symbol at face value and cease more in-depth pursuits. Historically this is compounded by those factions that discourage more in-depth pursuits and rest upon the iconography as the unassailable essence itself in order to control the masses and the message.

Yes... The letter is the surface from which we begin our spiritual quests. As experience is gathered/concentrated, one may proceed from the letter to the spirit. Because of our frail constitutions (present distress), this is the case. One must start shallow (with letter, law) and then go deeper with one's pursuits. Sincerity, immediacy, pain, intensity, brokenness, tears, joy, laughter, longing -- all come into play in this dance with the divine.

Surface melts away and depths are encountered that are beyond one's wildest dreams (much more than we could ask or think). If however, we do not eventually arrive at the heart of the matter (love), it all has been for naught (a mere child's game). We have to see it through to Paul's ("...such an one was caught up to the third heaven and saw things that are unlawful for a man to utter"). (Working from memory here, might have misquoted that just a bit.)

edit: Might have gotten a bit off-topic here, mods delete if so. I'm new at these more learned discussions but hopefully getting better. Always room for improvement.