Discussion about scientific issues as they relate to God and Christianity including archaeology, origins of life, the universe, intelligent design, evolution, etc.
This is turning into a rather pointless discussion. We went off-topic with your response to Kurieuo that ID assumes a designer, and that is bias. I pointed out that Darwin had his own biases when he formulated the principle of natural selection. You already admitted that Darwin was biased when he wrote 'Origin of Species'. The point of contention then became whether natural selection was a conclusion or a premise. You asserted that it was a conclusion, while I showed, from 'The origin of species', that it was a premise. You then set out to prove that natural selection was valid (as a premise).
Your last post was even more baffling to me.
No you misunderstood, I meant to say all conclusions in science are subject to scrutiny.
If I misunderstood, it was because of this:
Quote:
On what basis then do you assume anything that science describes to be true? Elsewhere you agreed that there are certain fundamental underpinnings to science, are you now saying those fundamental beliefs are fluid? Are the laws of logic fluid? How about the scientific method?
I assume nothing ever in the history of science is true. It is all subject to criticism.
The question is clearly about the fundamentals of science, and I even quoted examples. Your answer was also clear. Either you didn't read my question, and provided an answer that was not reflective of your position, or you have since saying that reversed your position.
I know it is natural to respond to a statement made, but please try to take the statement in context of the entire discussion so we don't need to refer to posts already made.
I find this statement a bit disingenuous. Why don't you point out the instances where I have taken things out of context of 'the entire discussion'? The discussion is about bias, and how it can influence the conclusions we reach. Right?
It is possible for all scientific theories to be wrong. It is this way of thinking, where ideas and "truths" are from men and are falible, that we have all the benefits of science.
Before I'm accused of taking things out of context again, please define what you mean by 'scientific theories'. Are those the premises or the conclusions, or both?
Here is some evidence of natural selection.
Many birds have an advanced courtship dance, and decorative plumage which allows them to attract potential female mates. Apparently brightly coloured plumage is sexually selected. If we remove a few feathers from one group and not another the females prefer the fully plumed males. This is natural sexual selection.
I am not sure if in Darwins time if the idea of punctuated equilibrium and genetic drift were around. I think when evolution was in its infancy there was alot of emphasis on natural selection, however there is a problem with this. In large populations any mutations would be so diluted into the population that it would take many many generations for a new gene to take hold. Especially if its a gene which gives no advantage to the individual immediately. I.E. random mutation which makes an organism's blood protiens deformed. No apparent health effects but intereferes with malaria causing protazoan infestation.
That is why new theories were created, because these explanations of science cannot account for the fossil evidence which has speciation taking hundrends of thousands of years not millions of years it would take for the gradual changes expected from natural selection alone.
Environmental and Sexual Selection on a small isolated population has the potential for dramatic radical speciation.
There are many threads already discussing the merits of evolution as a scientific theory, so I don't wish to engage on it here. Suffice to say that punctuatued equilibrium has nothing to do with natural selection, they are supposedly complimentary. The problem with punctuated equilibrium is the lack of evidence, and that shortcoming makes it almost indistinguishable from special creation.
It only takes a little study to see that science is an evolution, a trial an error process of systematic discovery which allows us to approximate the true mechanics of a diverse array of knowledge.
I agree. In some cases, however, scientists will hold on to a false theory with fervor, because it suits their bias. They will also fail to interpret the evidence objectively, they will rather make it fit their bias. If the premise on which they interpret the evidence was biased to begin with, then the process breaks down even more. We may argue further as to the biases of ID vs evolution here, but it seems we won't reach a conclusion.
Acts 17:24-25 (NIV)
"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. [25] And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else."
No you misunderstood, I meant to say all conclusions in science are subject to scrutiny.
If I misunderstood, it was because of this:
Quote:
On what basis then do you assume anything that science describes to be true? Elsewhere you agreed that there are certain fundamental underpinnings to science, are you now saying those fundamental beliefs are fluid? Are the laws of logic fluid? How about the scientific method?
I assume nothing ever in the history of science is true. It is all subject to criticism.
Ah I see, I apologize, I did not read your statement completely before answering. There was a party at my house and I couldn't concentrate. I meant that the conclusions are subject to criticism. As regards to the fundamental underpinnings of science, these also may change due to understanding, however this only changes how we percieve observations made. Do you have any critism for the scientific method or the laws of logic?
I know it is natural to respond to a statement made, but please try to take the statement in context of the entire discussion so we don't need to refer to posts already made.
I find this statement a bit disingenuous. Why don't you point out the instances where I have taken things out of context of 'the entire discussion'? The discussion is about bias, and how it can influence the conclusions we reach. Right?
Its not that, I was just expressing some frustration because we had already reached this conclusion in another post, and I perceived you bringing it up again as a way for you to argue a point symantically.
It is possible for all scientific theories to be wrong. It is this way of thinking, where ideas and "truths" are from men and are falible, that we have all the benefits of science.
Before I'm accused of taking things out of context again, please define what you mean by 'scientific theories'. Are those the premises or the conclusions, or both?
conclusions.
Now I know you are trying to say that Darwin was biased and therefore his theories are built on false premises. However science does not work that way. Many biased individuals all from different backgrounds and beleifs have reviewed and modified his original theory. Its a shared collaboration. Yes, there are successive theories built on the previous ones, but previous failings do not lead to a domino effect. As each theory has its own tests and collection of evidence.
Sure we can reach a conclusion, please be patient with me. How about this, explain to me by using an example what false premises a specific theory is built on.
It is not length of life, but depth of life. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
August wrote:Sure looks like Darwin used it as an axiom, unless "law", "principle" and "dogma" means something else to you than it does to me. If not, what axioms did he use to interpret his observations? What principle then underlies natural selection? If there is nothing underlying it, on what basis should we believe it?
The fact that he assigned power to nature is in direct opposition to a religious worldview, in fact, it's the creation of a new religious worldview. How would you distinguish between the "power of selection" over the "power of creation"? Both attempt to explain the origin of species.
He did. However can you find a reason to argue against natural selection? You cannot ignore the rest of everything he wrote which explains how he came to the comclusion of natural selection. Then upon reaching this conclusion he concluded that evolution had taken place.
Fast forward to present time. The evidence is abundant that organisms have changed over time. Evolution is no longer a conclusion of natural selection, it is deducted from the abundant evidence. Yes it is still just a conclusion but it is not reached by the same methods by which Darwin reached it.
It is not length of life, but depth of life. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
BGoodForGoodSake, as you may have heard, everything that comes into existence has a cause. The 'particles' or whatever that was found through quantum theory, them being 'particles' that pop in from nothing and pop out into nothing, STILL has to have design behind it. The beginning was void, how could ANYTHING, even these 'particles' exist, it STILL has to have design. I see it more of supernatural selection rather than natural, but if you want to take natural, it still has a guiding hand. There are many, many scientists that have seen the massive amounts of holes in Darwin's theory of evolution. Morality and caring for one another is part of something bigger than us. I'm making unproven assumptions here, but I think you hold your atheistic beliefs because you refuse to look at ALL the evidence out there, you only want to stick to what feels right to you, as Christianity feels right to me. Your 'logic' sooner or later WILL collapse as the logic of the universe does not. As a good friend/brother told me, even if there was nothing, 2+2 still equals 4. So where does that logic come from?
Ok, Bgoode, I really didn't want to have yet another discussion about this. There are plenty elsewhere on the board, but since you insist, let's continue. I will let my answer stand as my closing statement on this topic.
My answer is two-fold. I will answer both your broad questions, the first what reasons I can find to argue against natural selection, and your second, about a theory built on a false premise.
My first argument against natural selection is really simple. Natural selection is based on the agnostic desire of Charles Darwin to prove that there is a naturalistic alternative to creation. Although Darwin grew up as a Christian, he drifted away from that to become agnostic, and the only reason he was not a vocal atheist, was that he felt it would offend his family:
" Although I am a keen advocate of freedom of opinion in all questions, it seems to me (rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity and Theism hardly have any effect on the public; and that freedom of thought will best be promoted by that gradual enlightening of human understanding which follows the progress of science. I have therefore always avoided writing about religion and have confined myself to science. Possibly I have been too strongly influenced by the thought of the concern it might cause some members of my family, if in any way I lent my support to direct attacks on religion."
Other Darwinian experts conclude the same:" t is apparent that Darwin lost his faith in the years 1836-39, much of it clearly prior to the reading of Malthus. In order not to hurt the feelings of his friends and of his wife, Darwin often used deistic language in his publications, but much in his Notebooks indicates that by this time he had become a 'materialist' (more or less = atheist). - Ernst Mayer"
Richard Dawkins, one of the most vocal current supporters of evolution, sealed it: "For Darwin, any evolution that had to be helped over the jumps by God was no evolution at all. It made a nonsense of the central point of evolution. ~ Richard Dawkins
Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. ~ Richard Dawkins"
Since the ToE, with its lynchpin of natural selection, proposes origins of species as a result of blind, semi-random process, it lead Darwin and his followers to conclude there was no need for a creator. this is on direct contrast with the Bible, belief in an almighty God, and His works. many argue that there is room for both, but it leads only to a powerless God, one who created a prebiotic soup and then turned His back on creation. A belief in naturalism would have us believe:
1) Everything came from nothing
2) Order came from chaos
3) Life came from non-life
4) Intelligence came from non-intelligence
5) Moral nature came from amoral things
6) Personality came from non-personality.
7) Copulating came from cell dividing
8 ) Taste from the tasteless...etc!
It would have us believe that everything turned into it's opposite, blindly, and mostly by chance. It certainly the way that atheists prefer it, we are nothing more than bags of chemicals. It is in direct opposition to what Christians believe.
The further absurdity of a naturalist position is that it uses premises that can only come from a Christian God, like the laws of logic, to try and prove their absurd position. They cannot account for the existence of those laws if we are the result of blind irrational processes, for then the laws of logic are the result of the same, and gives us no reason to trust them as being rational in any way. Even if you argue that everything still operates according to those laws, or the laws of physics, it still fails. If everything is the result of the operation of physical laws, it still does not give us any reason to trust them as being rational and objectively true. At the very most, it can tell you the cause for a belief, but we are not looking for a causal answer, we are looking for an epistemological basis. If two rivers are flowing, one is not flowing true and the other not, they are just flowing. They are just flowing because the law acting on them caused them to flow like that. For naturalists to infer that we are free to engage in debate, is to assume a non-naturalistic worldview.
Furthermore, if naturalistic processes are at bottom of all things then laws of logic (indeed any laws) don't exist. Laws are not "natural" in character. Natural things have location and particularity. Laws of logic do not.
In summary, to adhere to a naturalistic position is akin to a child slapping his father in the face, while sitting on his lap.
Ok, so on to the evidence. You yourself, in your previous post, alluded to the fact that there was problems with the evidence. These problems were not predicted by the ToE, because the ToE follows a linear pathway: one gene -> one protein -> one function. Recent advances in mapping genomes have exposed the failure of the ToE to predict, and account for, the complexities in translating the genetic code into a protein molecule. Several problems surface here for natural selection:
1. Gene transfer did happen from ancestor to descendant in a linear fashion only, but also horizontally, from neigbouring species in a different generation than the one being studied. There was thus no common ancestor, but a pool of ancestors. This raises the question of where natural selection was supposed to have acted, and how. It becomes impossible to define on the basis of ancestry, and definition becomes a function of functionality.
2. While horizontal gene transfer can add to the number of base pairs of a genome, bacterial genomes remain rather small, only 500k to 10m base pairs. Yet through many generations of a species, many cases of HGT and gene duplication can be doucmented. Why are the genomes then uniformly small? The answer is that there is a bias towards the deletion of genetic material, portions of the DNA fall away during reproduction. This in turn means that the mutational process driving the structural evolution of chromosomes is biased towards DNA loss. Random mutation and natural selection is inconsistent with the observed evidence of non-random bias toward deletion of DNA.
3. Experimental evidence suggests that muchj of the non-coding regions of the human genome play a critical role in the develppment and function of an individual. Natural selection theory suggested that if a segment of the DNA was not part of a gene that carried a code for the protein, there was no mechanism for natural selection to act on for that segment. The segment would be hidden from natural selection, because it would not be expressed in any way that affect the functional properties and subsequent survival of the individual. Instead the segment could merely be affected by random mutations that would scramble the code in that 'junk' DNA.
Natural selection on it's own cannot produce changes, and therefore, according to the ToE, genetic variation is necessary. These variations take many forms, geneselection, gene drift etc, but the most common one is mutation. As pointed out above though, mutation only leads to the deletion or changes in the genetic code, almost never to an increase in either complexity or information. There then remains no mechanism for the ToE to "add" to the genetic code, which in turn results in no new information that guides proteins to act in a specific way. Mutations are always shown to be non-beneficial, and therefore it's more inclined to destroy, rather than create.This leaves nothing for natural selection to act on, as it can only act on what is encoded in the DNA. (DARWINIAN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY AND THE LIFE SCIENCES IN THE 21ST CENTURY - Roland F. Hirsch)
There is much more, but this is already a long post.
I suppose you will now offer your rebuttal, which you are welcome to do. I will rest my case at this point. If there is anything specific that you wish to engage on, please do so in a new thread.
Acts 17:24-25 (NIV)
"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. [25] And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else."
