Evolution And My Job

[xSilverPhinx]

[font="Arial"][size="2"]Kafka,

[/size][/font][font="Arial"][size="2"]In your "Image" section, you wrote:
[quote]The soul of a human person is also a little trinity: will-intellect-act.[/quote]

This is interesting, what exactly do you mean by that?

From your March addition:

[/size][/font][font="Arial"][size="2"][quote]On day one the waters represented photons as well as subatomic particles of normal matter, protons, neutrons, and electrons, in the very young universe before it became transparent to light. These coalesced into neutral hydrogen atoms at the transparency to light event, releasing the photons.

On day two the waters represented dust and gas particles of an interstellar cloud, which likely originated from earlier generation supernova. The gas particles were mostly hydrogen and helium. The dust particles include heavier metallic elements formed from the supernova in an earlier generation of stars in a process called nucleo-synthesis. The solar system formed in the midst of the interstellar cloud dividing the dust and gas particles of the solar system from the dust and gas particles of the interstellar cloud (and perhaps other stars and star systems which may have been formed in the collapse).[/quote]

Another interpretation that could maybe fit "waters" is that gas acts like a fluid. [/size][/font]

[MithLuin]

I do not trust Dawkins to understand the intersection between science and religion, to be honest. I'm much more likely to trust JPII's [i]Fides et Ratio[/i] on this topic.

Another way of looking at this is that science tends to answer questions of 'how?' while religion tends to answer questions of 'why?' You're not going to ask a scientist "Why does misfortune strike some people and not others?" (Just as you would not ask a theologian "How do plants get energy from sunlight?")

There are some things in the creation accounts in Genesis that are [i]clearly [/i]beyond the scope of science. Science doesn't make value judgements. And yet, Genesis 1 is quite clear that every time God created something, he saw that it was [i]good[/i] - you're not going to get a conclusion like that from any experiment or empirical observation!

[RezaMikhaeil]

So I just spent an aweful lot of time writing a reply and "boom" it's gone. I'll try to write another one later.

[RezaMikhaeil]

DELETE PLEASE, I don't know how and it is just bits and pieces of my post that mostly got deleted.

[xSilverPhinx]

I can't go back and edit my post, but I wanted to change this paragrah a bit:

[quote]IDers such as those of the Discovery Institute use the argument that there are evolutionary instances which could not have happened by evolution, such as the bacterial flagellum. Behe took that apparatus said that it was [i]irreducibly complex[/i]. Sure, as a flagellum it couldn't work without all it's parts, but Ken Miller pointed out that its predecessor was a pore, used even to secrete toxins. A whole different function, but he showed that it did not need "extra help" to [i]evolve[/i] into something else.[/quote]

IDers such as those of the Discovery Institute use the argument that there are evolutionary instances which could not have happened by evolution, such as the bacterial flagellum. Behe took that apparatus said that it was [i]irreducibly complex. [/i]Something that is irreducibly complex could not have evolved, and so you're left with chance speculations which is what IDers such as Dembski and even Berlinski want to create so that they could undermine the theory. [i][i]

[/i][/i]ID is just an idea - and a bad one at that - because they can't prove that something like "the flagellum was designed because it's highly unlikely that it evolved". The flagellum would be Hoyle's airplane in this case.
[i][i]
[quote][/i][/i]So I just spent an aweful lot of time writing a reply and "boom" it's gone. I'll try to write another one later. [/quote]

I hate it when that happens, I always try to remind myself to copy what I've written so far when writing a big reply.

[quote] do not trust Dawkins to understand the intersection between science and religion, to be honest. I'm much more likely to trust JPII's [i]Fides et Ratio[/i] on this topic.

Another way of looking at this is that science tends to answer questions of 'how?' while religion tends to answer questions of 'why?' You're not going to ask a scientist "Why does misfortune strike some people and not others?" (Just as you would not ask a theologian "How do plants get energy from sunlight?")

There are some things in the creation accounts in Genesis that are [i]clearly [/i]beyond the scope of science. Science doesn't make value judgements. And yet, Genesis 1 is quite clear that every time God created something, he saw that it was [i]good[/i] - you're not going to get a conclusion like that from any experiment or empirical observation! [/quote]

I think maybe part of what makes Dawkins take a more extreme position on that issue is because he's an evolutionary biologist dealing with people who try and equate science and religion all the time (Young Earth creationists) and generalises it.

The way I see it, theistic evolution is about those value judgments and so really is not incompatible with facts.
Value judgements, however, are more difficult to prove as valid knowledge while science does, but then again what constitutes valid knowledge is in the eye of the beholder. [i][i]
[/i][/i]

Edited May 8, 2011 by xSilverPhinx

[kafka]

[quote name='xSilverPhinx' timestamp='1304840918' post='2238647']
[font="Arial"][size="2"]Kafka,
[/size][/font][font="Arial"][size="2"]In your "Image" section, you wrote:
This is interesting, what exactly do you mean by that?
[/quote]
yeah I decided not to linger on this because my understanding has not hit a peak but I will try to explain.

So you notice how throughout the commentary I have worked with my Catholic belief that God is One in Three. The Son (Jesus) is eternally proceeding from the Father; the Spirit is eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son. The Procession that is God is One, Eternal, Infinite, Transcendent, Love and so on, but the Procession is what makes the Persons distinct from the other and so there is a Transcendent order in God.

The Father is first, since He is the unoriginate origin of the Son and the Spirit.
The Son is second since He is the image or word (by analogy) of the Father. Here are some verses from a New Testament letter expressing this:

{1:15} He [Son] is the image of the invisible God [Father], the first-born of every creature. (Collosians)
{1:1} In the beginning was the Word [Son], and the Word was with God [Father], and God [Father] was the Word [Son].

The Spirit is third in order since He is by analogy the love of the Father and the Son.

So the being of God which is one and the same as His doing[i]is Three[/i]. And the Procession in God is His being and His doing, in spite of the truth that there are two distinct Processions which "demarcate" the Three distinct Persons. God is dynamic. And God is even in a sense delicate. In one sense the Son proceeding from the Father is the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son, since in addition to the fact that God is Eternty, Infinity, etc. the first procession is what makes the second procession possible.

So these analogies are very useful because God, the One in Three, as He is in Himself is, impossible to fully explain in words. And these analogies are built up by things which exist in nature which were in fact created by God. He creates, makes, desigsn, everything after Himself.

The soul of a unique human person and child of God is also one distinct and substantial 'thing' which informs the body. When is the soul of a human person fully realized? In acts of love. These acts of love spring forth from the will and intellect. An act proceeds from the will and intellect and so true love is a knowing (intellect) choice (will). So there is order in the soul. The will is first, the intellect is second, the act is third. Now this is also dynamic and subtle and fluid and difficult to put into the concrete. Say for example your love of biology. You want or you desire to study biology. This is of the will, but your will does not move blindly toward its object, it is guided by your knowledge that biology is good. And maybe your knowledge of studying biology in the past moves your will to study biology in the present. So your acts of love toward biology proceed from the will and the intellect. But they always start anew in the will. But it is really difficult to always be conscious of this in real life (let alone divide it), because the acts of the soul encompass the entire being of a human person which is soul-body-spirit.

So you have your will and your physical organ of the heart interacting together. This what the ancients simply called heart (this is of spirit the third aspect of human nature). You have your intellect and your brain interacting and this is what the ancients called mind (also of the spirit). Your entire being soul-body-spirit produce both interior and exterior actions.

And your realized acts of love toward biology are really an implicit love of God, neighbor and self, because they make you better as a human person, love of self, they make your neighbor better because your fellow human will receive the fruits of your study if you give it to them, which is love of neighbor, and if I may dare say to you, they might be an implicit love of God, because He made nature and you see that it is good. So you might be implicitly moving toward God through your love of biology But forgive me if I am crossing bounds

So basically every human person has multiple Trinitarian processes going on in his or her being (soul-body-spirit) and his or her doing (will-intellect-act) all the time and all at once. Although we do not of course act when we are asleep So that is just a sort of general statement.

But with God being is doing and doing is being where a human person is divided into being and doing. So there is really an infinite gap between us and God.
So that is my imperfect understanding at the present.

[quote name='xSilverPhinx' timestamp='1304840918' post='2238647']
Another interpretation that could maybe fit "waters" is that gas acts like a fluid. [/size][/font]
[/quote]
Brilliant! The thought never crossed my mind. I could work that into my commentary in a few places.
If you want explain more, or set me in the right direction. I love your posts.

Edited May 8, 2011 by kafka

[xSilverPhinx]

[quote name='kafka' timestamp='1304887868' post='2238789']
yeah I decided not to linger on this because my understanding has not hit a peak but I will try to explain.

So you notice how throughout the commentary I have worked with my Catholic belief that God is One in Three. The Son (Jesus) is eternally proceeding from the Father; the Spirit is eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son. The Procession that is God is One, Eternal, Infinite, Transcendent, Love and so on, but the Procession is what makes the Persons distinct from the other and so there is a Transcendent order in God.

The Father is first, since He is the unoriginate origin of the Son and the Spirit.
The Son is second since He is the image or word (by analogy) of the Father. Here are some verses from a New Testament letter expressing this:

{1:15} He [Son] is the image of the invisible God [Father], the first-born of every creature. (Collosians)
{1:1} In the beginning was the Word [Son], and the Word was with God [Father], and God [Father] was the Word [Son].

The Spirit is third in order since He is by analogy the love of the Father and the Son.

So the being of God which is one and the same as His doingis[i]is Three[/i]ible.

So these analogies are very useful because God, the One in Three, as He is in Himself is, impossible to fully explain in words. And these analogies are built up by things which exist in nature which were in fact created by God. He creates, makes, desigsn, everything after Himself.

The soul of a unique human person and child of God is also one distEterntyd substantial 'thing' which informs the body. When is the soul of a human person fully realized? In acts of love. These acts of love spring forth from the will and intellect. An act proceeds from the will and intellect and so true love is a knowing (intellect) choice (will). So there is order in the soul. The will is first, thdesigsnlect is second, the act is third. Now this is also dynamic and subtle and fluid and difficult to put into the concrete. Say for example your love of biology. You want or you desire to study biology. This is of the will, but your will does not move blindly toward its object, it is guided by your knowledge that biology is good. And maybe your knowledge of studying biology in the past moves your will to study biology in the present. So your acts of love toward biology proceed from the will and the intellect. But they always start anew in the will. But it is really difficult to always be conscious of this in real life (let alone divide it), because the acts of the soul encompass the entire being of a human person which is soul-body-spirit.

So you have your will and your physical organ of the heart interacting together. This what the ancients simply called heart (this is of spirit the third aspect of human nature). You have your intellect and your brain interacting and this is what the ancients called mind (also of the spirit). Your entire being soul-body-spirit produce both interior and exterior actions.

So basically every human person has multiple Trinitarian processes going on in his or her being (soul-body-spirit) and his or her doing (will-intellect-act) all the time and all at once. Although we do not of course act when we are asleep So that is just a sort of general statement.

But with God being is doing and doing is being where a human person is divided into being and doing. So there is really an infinite gap between us and God.
So that is my imperfect understanding at the preTrinitariante[/quote]

Oh, okay. I thought I'd bring that up since you're looking to weave science into your beleifs and thought you might want to look into it. It resembles the brain's decision-making process, namely that we are not conscious of how our brains reach a decision at first and that you become aware of and intellectualise or rationalise a decision that had already been made with a time lapse of up to 6 seconds which would come before any action to carry it out.

This brings up a few problems for free will though, since we are not aware of it it's difficult to know just how free it is.


[quote]And your realized acts of love toward biology are really an implicit love of God, neighbor and self, because they make you better as a human person, love of self, they make your neighbor better because your fellow human will receive the fruits of your study if you give it to them, which is love of neighbor, and if I may dare say to you, they might be an implicit love of God, because He made nature and you see that it is good. So you might be implicitly moving toward God through your love of biology But forgive me if I am crossing bounds [/quote]

You're not crossing bounds, I think I get the gist of what you're saying, though wouldn't use the word "god" to refer to it. I would interpret "god" differently than a theist or deist.


[quote]Brilliant! The thought never crossed my mind. I could work that into my commentary in a few places.
If you want explain more, or set me in the right direction. I love your posts.
[/quote]



I think that what you're doing is an interesting challenge, but I know even less about physics than biology, so I'm afraid I would be of much help there.

I always thought that wiki is a good place to start: [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_dynamics"]Fluid dynamics[/url]

[RezaMikhaeil]

Here we go again, this won't be as detailed as my last response that got deleted but hopefully will still be beneficial.

[quote name='xSilverPhinx' timestamp='1304826132' post='2238592'][font="Arial Narrow"][size="3"]Well I didn't mean that stingrays couldn't have adapted to live in fresh water, if I'm not mistaken there's even a species of shark that that has undergone the same process or is able to swim in both salt and fresh water without suffering too much from the osmotic effect. I actually meant that Lamarckism as a broad theory has been proven to be incorrect (except in some epigenetic sense).

Here's the wiki link: [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism%20"]Lamarckism[/url]

Evolution does not happen at the individual level, or in a living being's lifetime, as that would be closer to Lamarckism than reality. Individuals pass on their genes with mutations which can manifest into a characteristic which is naturally selected by their offspring and not acquire a characteristic out of necessity in their lifetime and pass it on. It's just the way you wrote that looked to be Lamarckian, if not, then I apologise.

Would you imagine the first amphibians for instance having grown complex limbs in one go? I also think that's far fetched...sort of like saying that the eye came about in one or two generations...

Using our ancestors, for example, our limbs came from fish fins. They were rudimentary at first.[/quote]

I have read that wikilink before, I'd actually read it before we had this conversation. I agree that Sting Rays would not develop limbs in the life of a single stingray, I was more just trying to throw out a hypothetical as to what it would take for such to take place. Changes such as going from salt water to fresh water are minor changes amongst species. Those are simple to account for, but the macro evolutionary changes are not simple and are not well accounted for.

[quote]Google has loads on this, including detailed changes in the whale fossil record. As far as I know, one of the earliest fossils that has been linked to whales (a wolf-like hoofed mammal) showed evidence in it's skull that it had already begun an amphibious life (in the inner ear), an adaptation that is still present in modern whales. Other fossil links even show a succession of the nostrils moving up towards the top of the skull. As I mentioned earlier, modern whales still preserve the genetic instructions (atavism) for atrophied legs, which still shows up sometimes:

This [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_cetaceans"]wiki link[/url] has a list of other good links at the bottom if you want to research this further.

What would it take to prove that both we and other apes are part of the larger ape family with common descent ? Do you see it as just a series of coincidences backed by us sharing about 92% of our genome with chimps including all the genetic markers previous to us branching off from out nearest common ancestor?

Did you know about our fused chromosome 2?[/quote]

I have read those links too and done extensive reading from those resources but also others too. Allow me to first response to the last question, and the 92% figure. I'm aware of the fused chromosome research and the 92% figure. Actually from what I have read scientists like Richard Dawkins put it closer to 98% but lets not allow a few percentage points to hinder our discussion. First this figure of 98% is slightly tainted in that it doesn't give the full picture and misleads the people slightly. It's true that we do have much in common with apes but it's much more complicated then evolutionists would like us to believe.



[quote]

Specific examples of these differences include:

[list=1][*]Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes while chimpanzees have 24. Evolutionary scientists believe that one of the human chromosomes has been formed through the fusion of two small chromosomes in the chimp instead of an intrinsic difference resulting from a separate creation.[*]At the end of each chromosome is a string of repeating DNA sequences called a telomere. Chimpanzees and other apes have about 23 kilobases (a kilobase is 1,000 base pairs of DNA) of repeats. Humans are unique among primates with much shorter telomeres only 10 kilobases long.[sup]7[/sup][*]While 18 pairs of chromosomes are ‘virtually identical’, chromosomes 4, 9 and 12 show evidence of being ‘remodeled.’[sup]5[/sup] In other words, the genes and markers on these chromosomes are not in the same order in the human and chimpanzee. Instead of ‘being remodeled’ as the evolutionists suggest, these could, logically, also be intrinsic differences because of a separate creation.[*]The Y chromosome in particular is of a different size and has many markers that do not line up between the human and chimpanzee.[sup]1[/sup][*]Scientists have prepared a human-chimpanzee comparative clone map of chromosome 21 in particular. They observed ‘large, non-random regions of difference between the two genomes.’ They found a number of regions that ‘might correspond to insertions that are specific to the human lineage.’[sup]3[/sup][/list]These types of differences are not generally included in calculations of percent DNA similarity.

In one of the most extensive studies comparing human and chimp DNA,[sup]3[/sup] the researchers compared >19.8 million bases. While this sounds like a lot, it still represents slightly less than 1% of the genome.


[/quote]

This is a good question that you ask about what it would take to prove that humans and apes are part of a larger family and have a common ancestor. It would takes a much more conclusive fossil record for starters. Second Darwin's Theory must be much more clear then it is. I don't believe that it is that clear and where it is clear, the fossil record has severe gaps. This isn't to say that it should be said to be "false" and should be discarded, but rather it should remain on the table with all the other theories as unproved. If we only have 1% or less of scientific data, and we make predictions and insist that it's a "settled issue", that's like playing pictionary and only allowing the person to draw for 1 second and insisting that we know what the person was going to draw without a clue to point us in the proper direction. We need to allow the canvas to be drawn upon before was assume that we know what he/she was going to draw, or in this situation what conclusions science was going to draw. It's always easy to persuade ourselves that we have understood something when we haven't understood a thing.

The question is not weather we can retroactively explain an adaptation but weather we got that adaptation from general principals of science. This is where Darwinian Theory is inadequate but it's a requirement of science - historically. If we're talking about astrophysics and we have a dynamical theory. We can put it to the test but simulating the evolution of the universe, we can determine where the evidence agrees with the theory and where it does not. This is virtually impossible for biology, as far as Darwin's Theory is concerned.

Now onto the more technical part about the fossil record. The late reptilian transitional fossils are well documented, that is without a doubt [sorry creationists] but the major adaptations/transitional fossils are incomplete. It's so imcomplete that it doesn't come close to what Darwinian Theory requires. If you read about condon paleontology, in the large variety of Dr. Robert L. Carroll's [who is will respected] books, he says, "major transitional fossils are missing from the fossil record", just as many before him have said. If you examine insects, there is almost no fossil documentation. The only documentation is between ants and wasps, according to Eugenie Scott herself.

Thou it's not what the media would like us to believe, neither would most college professors, what Darwinian Theory requires is a wide range of major trasitional and/or intermediate species in the fossil record for every significant morphological or physiological feature in a modern species. We currently do not have them, maybe we will some day. That's why I say not to take the theory off the table.

I'm going to break this up into pieces, as a result of what happened to my response last time, the rest of your questions will be answered in a few minutes.[/size][/font]

[RezaMikhaeil]

[font="Arial Narrow"][size="3"][quote][font="Arial Narrow"][size="3"]"Scientists that ascribe to intelligent design have made many scientific discoveries and pushed science further."

Now it's my turn to ask for evidence of this...[/size][/font][/quote]

No problem, going back before Darwinian Theory [or any of the other evolutionary thoughts] were even a thought in somebodies mind and everyone believed in a higher power, or was agnostic, scientific theory was not prevented. I agree that people like Galileo were hindered by some religious people [in his situation, Catholics ironically] but it wasn't affective and didn't hinder him from presenting the scientific evidence. Galileo was a believer in G-d but he used that as motivation for his discoveries, as did Muslims that were doing blood transfusions during the Golden Age, and Einstein made similar statements that his belief in G-d actually encouraged him in his scientific discoveries.

In the modern realm, people like Dr. Robert Kaita, who is a Principal Research Physicist, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, which has furthered science in that particular field, ascibe to intelligent design but also are pushing forward with science.

[quote]Intelligent design does not require that one believe in god? What an odd thing to say...how would you define "intelligent" in this context?

IDers such as those of the Discovery Institute use the argument that there are evolutionary instances which could not have happened by evolution, such as the bacterial flagellum. Behe took that apparatus said that it was [i]irreducibly complex[/i]. Sure, as a flagellum it couldn't work without all it's parts, but Ken Miller pointed out that its predecessor was a pore, used even to secrete toxins. A whole different function, but he showed that it did not need "extra help" to [i]evolve[/i] into something else.

I don't see how this differs from creationism, albeit a more sophisticated form of creationism, who look at the world and living organisms in their present complex forms and say: those could not have popped into existence from pure chance (just as the odds of a hurricane assembling an airplane in a junkyard are basically null) therefore there must've been an intelligent creator. With ID it's the same argument, only using smaller parts or "snapshots" of evolutionary history as is the case with the flagellum example.



If your understanding of ID is different, then please, clarify.
[/quote]

I figured that after I said intelligent design does not take the belief in G-d you'd respond back with many questions. I'm glad that you did because it gives me an opportunity to clarify [usually that isn't the case]. I'm sure that you'd agree, if intelligent design required the belief in G-d, there would be no agnostics unless they leaned towards the belief in G-d [closet theists, that were unsure about which G-d, etc]. However that isn't the case, we find many true agnostics that are part of the intelligent design "community" [if you were]. The confusion that you find is over the difference between intelligent design and creationism. Creationism properly understood, begins with the Bible [or Qur'an] and makes despirate attempts to fit those stories into the scientific data. Therefore, they only acknowledge information that fits into their religion and attempt to skew the rest of the information to fit into their religion.

Intelligent design doesn't do that, rather it's the study of patterns in nature that are best explained as a result of intelligence. Intelligent "designers", do not necessarily believe in G-d, and credit him as "the designer", thou many do chose to do so. However, intelligent design only requires a minimal scientific commitment to the POSSIBILITY of detecting intelligent causation. What this means is that the possibility remains open to the idea that some form of intelligence guided that which we see before us. Have you ever seen the film, "Men in Black"? It's an entertaining film, I liked it. Do you remember the end of the film? [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyzIau5dBao"]http://www.youtube.c...h?v=LyzIau5dBao[/url] That would be considered intelligent design. It's not what I personally believe, but intelligent design leaves open that possibility.

Additionally a hypothetical could be, lets say that like Men in Black, our world is just a spec in the world of a different living being. Lets say that that particular living being, everyday eats a meal and discards the uneaten portions like the rest of the people in our world. Now lets say that the discarded portions bread bacteria [as does in our world] and that creates a form of life that gives rise to other forms of life. That is a form of intelligence that gives rise to a lessor form of intelligence too.

I'm not saying that there is scientific evidence to say, "this for sure is what it is", hell no...I'm sorry dust...heck no. However, we only have 1% of the picture so what do we know? Not only do scientists not have a clue as to how great white sharkes breed, but even archeologists barely have discovered 1% of all discoveries. Just a few years ago they discovered a city larger then los angelas in south america. It virtualy went unnoticed. Same goes for this subject.

[quote]I looked up Berlinski, tried to keep my biases in check when I saw that he's a Senior Fellow at the the Discovery Institute but still am not impressed. I find someone who keeps poking holes in something but does not offer new testable possibilities as suspicious.
[/quote]

He is a senior fellow but don't get lost in that. Not only does the discovery institutue not represent all of intelligent design [it has strayed from it's original intent to be honest] but Dr. Berlinski, unlike many of the fellows there, refuses to theorize about the origins of life but also refers to his relationship with them as, "[font="Arial"]warm but distant. It's the same attitude that I display in public toward my ex-wives."[sup] This is because he is agnostic and refuses to theorize about the origins of life. He is a true agnostic.[/sup][/font]

[quote][url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpeOD593lCc"]Here for instance[/url], he says that mathematicians say that it's a preposterous theory because they think it's explains how life originated. Once again, mathematicians looking at a complex stage and calculating probabilities...he's opposing strawmen here, not darwinian theory.
[/quote]

Well I disagree with you, he's opposing Darwin's Theory. Surely Darwin's Theory as Darwin understood it, had nothing to do with the origins of life but rather what came after, despite what he named his book. However those who have furthered the theory put that in the situation of the origins of life. He's saying that mathmatically speaking, if we calculate the odds of a single cell organism developing as a result of evolution, it's impossible.

[quote]He also says that the fossil record cannot sustain any intelligent prediction which can be derived from Darwinian theory.Two points here:

- the theory does not rely as heavily on the fossil record as creationists would want people to believe and fossilisation is not a common occurence in the first place. Because we can't stack the fossils we have into mountains does not invalidate the theory.
- check this out: [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiktaalik"]Fish with limbs found based on a prediction[/url]
[/quote]

Well I disagree with you, I think that the theory relies heavily upon the fossil record and Eugenie Scott conceded this point to him in one of their debates.

[quote]He also says that natural selection and random variation can't account for the generation of a high level of complexity. Well, it's not all down to just that...complexity can happen as a chain event based on other things not selected for, such as in the fox example I mentioned earleir. Foxes were selected for just tameness, but it caused a series of effects such as change in fur colour, floppy ears they started to bark even. Living organisms are complex and evolution doesn't operate on a trait by trait basis. Traits are selected, but organisms can get more complex then they bargained for. Not to mention that there are inherited effects that are not restriced to our genome. Not all the details are fully known.

There are limitations to understanding complexity based on natural selection alone, though it is the main mechanism. [b]
[/b][/quote]

Natural Selection is the most widely accepted and is considered to be the most varified of all forms. If that has limitations, I don't think that the other forms of evolution are going to further the discussion, when they run into the same problems.

Part 3 next[/size][/font] - after I feed my children.

Edited May 8, 2011 by RezaMikhaeil

[kafka]

[quote name='xSilverPhinx' timestamp='1304891751' post='2238808']
Oh, okay. I thought I'd bring that up since you're looking to weave science into your beleifs and thought you might want to look into it. It resembles the brain's decision-making process, namely that we are not conscious of how our brains reach a decision at first and that you become aware of and intellectualise or rationalise a decision that had already been made with a time lapse of up to 6 seconds which would come before any action to carry it out.

This brings up a few problems for free will though, since we are not aware of it it's difficult to know just how free it is.
[/quote]
Interesting.

Yeah I departed from science in that particular post.

Well I would say we are aware of the will experentially, I mean I can interiorly desire anything I want to, anything in the world. But maybe I cannot have what I want. Or maybe I cannot explain what I want. Who can really explain one's whole heart to another let alone one's own self? And I cannot change the nature of an object I want (e.g. from evil into good or good into evil). So the will is limited, and one cannot take a photograph of it or observe it in a labratory. One cannot fully explain everything that goes on in it, but I think it really generates everything we do. Even if one doesnt want to do something, one still chooses to do it maybe because of the threat of force or deprivation. So even in the face of this it is still in a sense free. But some people have the will fine tuned to a point that they know what they want and do everything to attain that end.

For the will to be truly free, I think, is to desire that which is best, that which has no limit, that which is forever, that which is beyond everything and to knowingly choose acts toward that end. But to do this is beyond the capacity of human nature as such without the likeness God made for His children.

But I guess this is philosophy/theology.

Edited May 9, 2011 by kafka

[MarkKurallSchuenemann]

[quote name='kafka' timestamp='1304730981' post='2238199']
The birds sprung forth from the dinosaurs which sprung forth from the reptiles which ultimately sprung forth from the micro-organisms. With this simple command God effects one whole prodigious eon in the history of Earth. A whole eon of evolution is implied in the simple command and blessing of God. The birds are said by science to be the only species of dinosaurs to survive the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event which I think could be the distinct end of day five.[/quote]

Actually, that is wrong, though greedy men like Bob Barker (the palentologist who cares more about seeing himself on TV than doing actual science) - will say birds are descended from Dinosaurs.

There is many things wrong with those theories.

Archeopteryx skeleton shows their wings were created from a different finger than that of modern day birds, and other ancient bird fossils dating back 300 million years ago.

[img]http://go2add.com/images/birds/image006.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/birds/resources/anatomy/feathers/wingfeathers.jpg[/img]
Evolution doesn't all of a sudden change the finger from the outside finger of the Archeopteryx - as shown, to the inside finger of modern day birds. . . I guess birds evolved to form a wing, and lose that wing and regain it again with a different finger. Sorry, evolution doesn't work that way.

Another myth you can suspend. T-rex couldn't run 30km/h or it would break it's legs (literally), and Sauropods did spend a lot of time in swamps and water - they were right before Jurassiac park.

Edited May 9, 2011 by MarkKurallSchuenemann

[RezaMikhaeil]

Hehehehehe , can't believe you went at bob like that, dude's old , give him a break. He can't be out diggin for bones and what not.

[Amppax]

[quote name='MarkKurallSchuenemann' timestamp='1304912773' post='2238918']
Actually, that is wrong, though greedy men like Bob Barker (the palentologist who cares more about seeing himself on TV than doing actual science) - will say birds are descended from Dinosaurs.

[/quote]

Uhh.... Bob Barker???

[img]http://tailsmagazines.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/bob-barker.jpg[/img]

that man is a saint.

[kafka]

[quote name='MarkKurallSchuenemann' timestamp='1304912773' post='2238918']
Actually, that is wrong, though greedy men like Bob Barker (the palentologist who cares more about seeing himself on TV than doing actual science) - will say birds are descended from Dinosaurs.

There is many things wrong with those theories.

Archeopteryx skeleton shows their wings were created from a different finger than that of modern day birds, and other ancient bird fossils dating back 300 million years ago.

[img]http://go2add.com/images/birds/image006.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/birds/resources/anatomy/feathers/wingfeathers.jpg[/img]
Evolution doesn't all of a sudden change the finger from the outside finger of the Archeopteryx - as shown, to the inside finger of modern day birds. . . I guess birds evolved to form a wing, and lose that wing and regain it again with a different finger. Sorry, evolution doesn't work that way.

Another myth you can suspend. T-rex couldn't run 30km/h or it would break it's legs (literally), and Sauropods did spend a lot of time in swamps and water - they were right before Jurassiac park.
[/quote]
I dont know all the intricacies of evolution. I gathered in some general research and reading that the modern birds can be traced back to the dinosaurs. It was a controversial idea in science but now it is commonly accepted theory but maybe I have read the wrong stuff?

In any case they couldnt have descended from a mammal.

[MarkKurallSchuenemann]

[quote name='kafka' timestamp='1304946002' post='2239018']
I dont know all the intricacies of evolution. I gathered in some general research and reading that the modern birds can be traced back to the dinosaurs. It was a controversial idea in science but now it is commonly accepted theory but maybe I have read the wrong stuff?

In any case they couldnt have descended from a mammal.
[/quote]

From what I have read, it is quite possible birds and crocs are more directly related - maybe one 'generation' removed from crocs, and they have a common ancestory with dinosaurs - which is why there are similarities between them. Croc scales actually have feathers in them.

There have been a few fossils of birds before Archeoptryx.

[quote name='Amppax' timestamp='1304915095' post='2238932']
Uhh.... Bob Barker???

[img]http://tailsmagazines.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/bob-barker.jpg[/img]

that man is a saint.
[/quote]


Opps, wrong name.

Dr. Robert T. Bakker -

[img]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-g8yGmXmP4ZM/TaDxqVjX2fI/AAAAAAAACug/Hkrr5ZLdMTI/s400/Dr._Bob_Bakker.jpg[/img]

This jerk wants to make money and be famous.

Edited May 9, 2011 by MarkKurallSchuenemann