Evidence for God from Science

Wall-dog wrote:One of the problems in the argument against morality is that the argument is empirically flawed. If morality were a creation of Mankind then morality would differ dramatically from place to place and from culture to culture and would grow stronger as civilizations grow and our needs to interact increase. empirically however the opposite is true. Read a little about the birth and growth of civilization - Will Durant's 'The Story of Civilization' series is a good starting point. The first 100 pages of Book One, Our Oriental Heritage should be required reading.

It is fact that every civilization from the dawn of time has had almost exactly the same sense of morality. Variations are minimal and are easy to explain. Furthermore, it has been the case in every civilization that morality weakens as civilizations grow (leading to the fall of civilization).

The fact that morality is universal smacks of God, as does the fact that we become less moral as a peoples rather than more when civilizations grow.

What I'd like to know is, if we are an evolved species, where is the fossil evidence? It is ALSO a fact that archeologists have yet to find a single human or 'pre-human' fossil that does not fit modern man. Darwinists have created 'pre-human' skeletons by being creative with how they fit 'bone fragments' together.

Darwin only took micro-evolution as fact. By his own admission, his theories would have to be discarded if fossil evidence supporting it is not found.

Let me put it this way. Darwinism demands that all species are in a continual flux. Everything is continuously evolving, thus every 'species' is really a pre-species of another species. We are, according to Darwin, but a link between a previous pre-human type and a future human type (who will call us pre-human). This being the case, 100% of all fossil remains by definition are transitionary in nature and the VAST majority of fossils should be forms of species prior to modern forms. Yet no such fossils have ever been found with the possible exception of an animal Darwinists claim to be a common ancestor to both whales and hippos. Is it a common ancestor, a separate species altogether (and now extinct), or a fabrication? There is no reason to believe that it is a common ancestor other than that it appears to share some characteristics with both. How many shared characteristics? I could find just as many shared characteristics between my pet dog, a hippo, and myself. Does this make my dachshund a shared ancestor too?

The problem with modern science is that modern scientists have thrown out the scientific method and replaced it with a 'rule' that all things must have a natural cause. In other words, 'Science' starts with an assumption that God does not exist. Arguments against Intelligent Design start with the statement that Intelligent Design can't be scientific because it doesn't gel with the 'rule of science' that all things have naturalistic causes. But the statement that all things have naturalist causes is a THEORY rather than a fact. Saying that one can't use God as a legitimate scientific theory goes against the very nature of science - that only things PROVEN are accepted as fact. I find it particularly ironic that the arguments used to keep Intelligent Design outside the realm of science are exactly the same arguments the Catholic Church used to throw Gallelleo into jail.

i have been saying that morality is completely subjective, but only because we have our own definition. morality stems from a common human adaptation that we are able to survive better in groups. this is a very easy thing to figure out, that is why it is similar across the world. common morality is based on what is good for the whole (the whole being whatever culture the individual belongs to). individual morality varies from person to person, but the majority has this common idea that we must work as a community. there are those who are more prone to primal thoughts, or altogether unique thoughts--this is the nature of evolution.

there is so little fossil evidence because of the nature of the creation of fossils. fossil remains are so rare that we only find maybe a percent or two of the total number of organisms that ever existed. we will never find the fossils you are looking for, whether they existed or not.

your theories of the flaws of evolution are based in misunderstanding of how scientific processes work. you call evolutionists darwinists, when in fact many evolutionists disagree with a lot of darwin's claims. the fact is, darwin found a pattern in how organisms adapt to their environment through natural selection. genes are diversified through reproduction, and most of them die through natural selection. the ones that are able to survive long enough to pass on their genes are the transitional species.

the reason the fossils we find are not apparently forms of modern species is because of two major reasons:

1) because most of the organisms that have existed on this planet have gone extinct, and so have their genes. they lived back then, but their lines died out and so there are no descendants today.

2) most of the organisms that lived and died on this planet do not leave behind fossil remains. as i have stated, fossils are so rarely formed, that they cannot be used as evidence against evolution (unless a direct contradiction is found).

the problem with creationists is that they do not see natural cause as the work of god. science is only the observation of what exists. there are some who are not competent enough to make proper conclusions based on those observations, yet they still do; but in the long run, mistakes are usually weeded out. science is an ongoing study, forever correcting itself rather than bathing in absolutes.

Zenith,

How can you say that naturalism (I'll use that term rather than 'science' because of the 'all things must come from a natualist cause' part, which I maintain as theory rather than fact) is not bathed in absolutes when it starts with an absolutistic theory that God can not be the cause?

I'll agree with you that science is the study of that which exists. But as a Christian I believe that God exists. As a Christian who also believes in science, I believe that science and God are on a collision course. You say 'Big Bang' and I say 'Let There Be Light!' I'm not going to discount the notion that science is the study of what exists. I'll go a step further back and say that science will eventually prove that God exists. It's actually well on the way toward doing so, because science keeps shooting-down alternative explanations for things like the origin of morality, the origin of the universe, and the origin of species.

If God exists (and I believe he does) why would He want to be disproven? He wouldn't. Rather, He would want us to find Him, and Science will do so. You and I may not live to see it, but we are seeing the beginning of it because all of the other theories are getting shot down.

Let's talk genes. How many genes are there in Human DNA? Scientists, who hold that DNA is the 'computer code' that determines what we develop into, always said that there must be hundreds of millions and maybe even billions of genes in a human strand of DNA. Weren't they surprised then when they decoded DNA and found there were only about 30,000? Not only that, but they found that DNA changes throughout your life. In other words, if a group of homosexuals starts to pay attention to you when you are an adolescent and you decide to partake of that lifestyle, your DNA will adapt to it and as a part of your free will you will become a homosexual. If on the other hand you tell them to buzz off and start dating the opposite sex, your DNA will adapt and make you straight. It's all about choice. Naturalists try to discount free choice (by saying we are nothing more than dna-encoded computers) strictly because free will smacks of God. Science has proven that we have free will and yet naturalists won't admit that fact because free will can't be explained by 'naturalist causes.'

The problem with naturalism is that, because of their contention that all things must have naturalist causes, they are completely closed even to the possibility that God might exist. What if God came down in a pillar of fire and held a press conference in the White House Rose Garden? A true scientist would have to at least admit that a pillar of fire going up into the stratosphere that says to a national audience of millions that it is God (and then answers questions from the media) might really be God. A naturalist would have to call it a solar flare. A Christian scientist might mention that the 'solar flare' spoke. The naturalist would say that the 'speaking' was random noise amplified by the radiation in the solar flare, and that though what millions heard might have sounded like God holding a press conference and answering questions, it was just blind luck that it looked that way. Why would naturalists have to say that? Because saying that it might be God would be against their #1 theory that all things have naturalist causes. A true search for truth would take scientific fact alone and would not care what it might say or not say about God.

The chance for amino acids, if all of them really did get created naturally (which science has shown didn't happen), falling into the correct sequence to form a single protein is about the same as the chance for a tornado going through a junkyard to randomly throw-together a fully functional Boeing 747. And that's to create one protein. There are thousands of proteins in a single living cell, and they would have to all be thrown together randomly for there not to be a God. Naturalists don't discount that probability. Rather they say that those odds are still more probable than the idea that God did it. Well, that's their opinion. I'll bet they think the Lions are going to win the Super Bowl too. But they have to say that because saying anything else would throw naturalism right out the window.

The odds say there is a God. In the absence of any other theory that can stand up to subjective reason and analysis (i.e.: the scientific method), true science must accept that possibility as a legitimate theory.

Based on evolutionary theory (or naturalist theory or darwinist theory or whatever name you want to give it) the species called "Mankind" is nothing more than a transitionary subclass of the major line called "Primate." If evolution is true and I find 'human' remains, the odds of them matching modern Mankind are incredibly remote because evolution holds that there is no such thing as a fully evolved Man. We are still in flux. Thus there should be countless forms further back on the evolutionary ladder that any 'human' fossils we may find could have come from. If we still have dinosaur fossils, shouldn't we also still have fossils from Mankind that go back before our current form? Of course there should be. Naturalism has to come up with an explanation for not finding them because they haven't found them and the only legitimate conclusion one can make based on their absence is that evolution did not occur - which again smacks of God.

According to the scientific method, if the laws of probability point away from a theory that theory starts to lose clout. Evolution isn't just flawed. Based on any true scientific investigation, it just plain didn't happen. Naturalists however can't agree to that because they don't have an alternative explanation and they aren't willing to say "we just don't know" about something as fundamental as the origin of species.

Back to morality... When you say "the whole being whatever culture the individual belongs to" your argument falls apart. Based on that, each culture should have its own moral code and there should be as many moral codes as there are cultures. Those moral codes should have a tremendous amount of diversity and only a few underlying similarities - all would for example benefit having some form of culture. But the converse is true. There is only ONE underlying moral code, and NO culture going back to the beginning of time has EVER deviated from it except in very superficial ways - and even then the superficial variations are for reasons that fit back in with that single moral code! A single, underlying moral code that unites humanity smacks of God!

Science does not disprove God. Quite the contrary. Science should make us all religious.

<Edited Spelling Corrected..>

Just want to make a few corrections.

Wall-dog wrote:Zenith,

How can you say that naturalism (I'll use that term rather than 'science' because of the 'all things must come from a natualist cause' part, which I maintain as theory rather than fact) is not bathed in absolutes when it starts with an absolutistic theory that God can not be the cause?

Great Point, now onto the corrections.

Wall-dog wrote:Let's talk genes. How many genes are there in Human DNA? Scientists, who hold that DNA is the 'computer code' that determines what we develop into

Not quite computer code, more like building manifesto for a construction project.

Wall-dog wrote:, always said that there must be hundreds of millions and maybe even billions of genes in a human strand of DNA. Weren't they surprised then when they decoded DNA and found there were only about 30,000?

The proteins which the DNA encodes interact in countless ways.

Wall-dog wrote:Not only that, but they found that DNA changes throughout your life. In other words, if a group of homosexuals starts to pay attention to you when you are an adolescent and you decide to partake of that lifestyle, your DNA will adapt to it and as a part of your free will you will become a homosexual.

Not quite, the proteins which are encoded in the DNA determine your chemical composition, which is in turn effected by environment. Imagine it like a chess board DNA determines the starting peices, environment determines configuration.

Wall-dog wrote:If on the other hand you tell them to buzz off and start dating the opposite sex, your DNA will adapt and make you straight.

It's rather more complex than this.
The chance for amino acids, if all of them really did get created naturally (which science has shown didn't happen)[/quote]No, Science has yet to show it can happen.

Wall-dog wrote:, falling into the correct sequence to form a single protein is about the same as the chance for a tornado going through a junkyard to randomly throw-together a fully functional Boeing 747.

Incorrect once existing in sufficient quantities the chance a working sequence will form from nucleotides is 100%, quantum computing.

Wall-dog wrote:If evolution is true and I find 'human' remains, the odds of them matching modern Mankind are incredibly remote because evolution holds that there is no such thing as a fully evolved Man. We are still in flux.

Flux forms will match flux forms, no?

Wall-dog wrote:Thus there should be countless forms further back on the evolutionary ladder that any 'human' fossils we may find could have come from. If we still have dinosaur fossils, shouldn't we also still have fossils from Mankind that go back before our current form?

We don't?

Wall-dog wrote:According to the scientific method, if the laws of probability point away from a theory that theory starts to lose clout. Evolution isn't just flawed. Based on any true scientific investigation, it just plain didn't happen.

You're confusing abiogenisis with evolution. The chances of a population changing through time is 100%. The chances for life beginning is very small as far as we know.

Wall-dog wrote:Back to morality... When you say "the whole being whatever culture the individual belongs to" your argument falls apart. Based on that, each culture should have its own moral code and there should be as many moral codes as there are cultures.

Think harder, if a construct has a specific goal do you still expect unlimited variety? For example one culture needs something to pound grain into flour. How varied do you think this tool will be, as the purpose is the same. The human animal is not varied do you expect different cultures to have strikingly different foot protection, or communication methods?

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Agreed.

There are many things man woud like to do for pleasure and happiness but doesn't do them, if men really set the morals, they would make what is wrong right.

Jbuza wrote:

Zenith wrote: i have been saying that morality is completely subjective,

Is that why you know in your heart that everything you have done is right and just. We are the gods of this place and we should do what is right in our own eyes? Don't you worry it is clear from the Bible that will happen one day.

You cannot explain from this position why someone will do a moral, noble, just thing, when so often the underhanded and immoral thing is more rewarding and pleasurable.

Satan started whispiring delusions of grandeur to himself before man even asked why.

The only way good can even exist is if it is outside man.

Just a few small corrections huh? It looks like you had a correction for every sentence in my post LOL!!

Not quite computer code, more like building manifesto for a construction project.

I'd call either a decent analagy

Not quite, the proteins which are encoded in the DNA determine your chemical composition, which is in turn effected by environment. Imagine it like a chess board DNA determines the starting peices, environment determines configuration.

That's correct. But we control our environment and thus also control our DNA. That still leads to free will, making us more than just really complex computers and throwing a big kink in naturalist theory. It's really quite simple. Either we have free will and are capable of cognitive thought or we are just complex computers. If we program ourselves then we are capable of cognitive thought and naturalism can't explain that.

It's rather more complex than this.

Is it? If I decide to date women then my environment becomes one in which I am dating women and that is the environment my DNA will develop around.

No, Science has yet to show it can happen.

The point is that it did happen and naturalistic science doesn't have any way to explain it.

Incorrect once existing in sufficient quantities the chance a working sequence will form from nucleotides is 100%, quantum computing.

That's a bit of a cop-out since it doesn't change the underlying problem with getting the proteins in the first place. I'll grant that given sufficient quantities of proteins assembling themselves together along with an infinite amount of time you will eventually get lucky. The problem is that Earth didn't have sufficient quantities of proteins, that they don't just assemble together, and Earth didn't have an infinite amount of time to work with.

Flux forms will match flux forms, no?

That's just it though. The ONLY flux form they have ever found is the most current. If macro evolution occurred, where are the species that transitioned into the current species?

We don't?

Nope. Naturalists take bone fragments and assemble them using plaster to fill in the blanks. Every single bone fragment ever found for a human skeleton fits perfectly into modern man. When you see a picture of Cromagnon man with the big forehead, what you are looking at is someone taking bone fragments that could just as easily fit a modern person and assembling them around what they want Cromagnon man to look like. They show you a skull and then they show you an artist's representation for what the person who had that skull might have looked like. What they don't tell you is that the skull itself is really just an artist's representation...

You're confusing abiogenisis with evolution. The chances of a population changing through time is 100%. The chances for life beginning is very small as far as we know.

I don't think so. I think I'm clearly discussing macro-evolution. Populations changing aka micro-evolution clearly occurs. But creating mankind from the Ape or the Ape from bacteria? My contention is that both abiogenisis and macro-evolution are flawed theories.

Think harder, if a construct has a specific goal do you still expect unlimited variety? For example one culture needs something to pound grain into flour. How varied do you think this tool will be, as the purpose is the same. The human animal is not varied do you expect different cultures to have strikingly different foot protection, or communication methods?

Not all cultures have the same goals beyond the most fundemental. If culture varies dramatically and morality is only specific to culture, then I should see variations in morality that mirror the variation in culture. Your grain analogy for example falls apart if one culture uses wheat to make flour and another uses corn. Then the tools would be quite different. So to I would expect different morals from different cultures. Yet you don't see that at all.

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Nope. Naturalists take bone fragments and assemble them using plaster to fill in the blanks. Every single bone fragment ever found for a human skeleton fits perfectly into modern man. When you see a picture of Cromagnon man with the big forehead, what you are looking at is someone taking bone fragments that could just as easily fit a modern person and assembling them around what they want Cromagnon man to look like. They show you a skull and then they show you an artist's representation for what the person who had that skull might have looked like. What they don't tell you is that the skull itself is really just an artist's representation...

Cromagnons are essentially modern humans. But here's one that's not:



One is a fossil Cromagnon, one is a Neandertal. As you can see, they didn't fix them up. Neandertals are quite different than anatomically modern humans.

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Barbarian,

That picture isn't exactly hi-res, but even in it you can see the color variations in the skull. That's not from age. That's from plaster. The actual bone from both could have just as easily been put together to create a modern skull. But the naturalists who assembled the fragments into skulls knew what the skulls should have looked like according to evolutionary theory so when they assembled the skulls they made them look the way they thought they should have looked. It's like assembling a jigsaw puzzle when you only have a some of the pieces - if you are missing enough you can give the puzzle any shape you want. Look at all the gray around the cheekbones and in the upper jaw on the cromagnon skull. Look at the large gray areas used to extend the skull backward an inch or so. Not a single tooth in the upper jaw is even in bone. There is NO WAY anyone can say that's what that skull really looks like. The neandrathal skull looks far more intact. Of course, it also looks much more modern, except where you have a lighter coloration around the eyes. That must be plaster...

Really they use lots of different things to hold bone fragments together and to 'fill in the gaps.' It is hard to say how much is real just from a picture.

Keep in mind too that there are many variations between different modern skulls. Taking two very different skulls and putting them side by side doesn't really show how much they differ from modern skulls. It only shows how much they differ from each other. My skull likely looks very different from yours, yet nobody would say that one of us evolved from the other.

The only intact bone on the most complete cromagnon skull in existence is the jawbone. Amazingly, that's also the only part of the skull that is identical to our own. I wonder had they never found an intact jaw bone if cromagnon man would have had a different jaw than we do?

In fairness they don't have enough fragments from any human skull that old to prove that they should look like us either, but the burden of proof should be on those who say they found a skull that is shaped differently. Really, the most scientific way to look at those skulls would be to look at the fragments laid out on a table. But that wouldn't be impressive.

Wall-dog wrote:Barbarian,

That picture isn't exactly hi-res, but even in it you can see the color variations in the skull. That's not from age. That's from plaster. The actual bone from both could have just as easily been put together to create a modern skull. But the naturalists who assembled the fragments into skulls knew what the skulls should have looked like according to evolutionary theory so when they assembled the skulls they made them look the way they thought they should have looked. It's like assembling a jigsaw puzzle when you only have a some of the pieces - if you are missing enough you can give the puzzle any shape you want. Look at all the gray around the cheekbones and in the upper jaw on the cromagnon skull. Look at the large gray areas used to extend the skull backward an inch or so. Not a single tooth in the upper jaw is even in bone. There is NO WAY anyone can say that's what that skull really looks like. The neandrathal skull looks far more intact. Of course, it also looks much more modern, except where you have a lighter coloration around the eyes. That must be plaster...

Really they use lots of different things to hold bone fragments together and to 'fill in the gaps.' It is hard to say how much is real just from a picture.

Keep in mind too that there are many variations between different modern skulls. Taking two very different skulls and putting them side by side doesn't really show how much they differ from modern skulls. It only shows how much they differ from each other. My skull likely looks very different from yours, yet nobody would say that one of us evolved from the other.

The only intact bone on the most complete cromagnon skull in existence is the jawbone. Amazingly, that's also the only part of the skull that is identical to our own. I wonder had they never found an intact jaw bone if cromagnon man would have had a different jaw than we do?

In fairness they don't have enough fragments from any human skull that old to prove that they should look like us either, but the burden of proof should be on those who say they found a skull that is shaped differently. Really, the most scientific way to look at those skulls would be to look at the fragments laid out on a table. But that wouldn't be impressive.

Wall-dog, sorry brother, but you are completely out on your own here. First off, hi-res isn't necessary for basic visual confirmation of spacial dimensions. The skulls are obviously different in overall size. The vast majority of the bone for those skulls is present, ergo, you can't "enlarge" it's basic spacial components with just plaster.

As far as the other assertions you have made regarding no other hominid fossils being found which differ from modern humans, stop looking at the internet, and go get some books. They have hundreds of fossils, including, small "hobbit" sized people.

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Jbuza wrote:Ya, Wall-Dog you should know better. You must be basically uneducated if you haven't accepted evolution yet. cheeesh <sarcasm>

What exactly is the point of debating topics in a forum named "God and Science, if you have no understanding of scientific methodology and empirical values? It seems a rather ludicrous waste of time to simply post refutations based on personal bias?

The founding principle of a forum thread such as this, is positivism, in the fact that a scientific understanding of our world shows the remarkable workmanship of an intended and thought out design, versus the aetheistic stance that it all plopped into being by "chance", and (this one gives me great laughter), "man" is master of the universe... by chance of course. LOLOLOL.

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Jbuza wrote:

Mastriani wrote:

Jbuza wrote:Ya, Wall-Dog you should know better. You must be basically uneducated if you haven't accepted evolution yet. cheeesh <sarcasm>

What exactly is the point of debating topics in a forum named "God and Science, if you have no understanding of scientific methodology and empirical values? It seems a rather ludicrous waste of time to simply post refutations based on personal bias?

The founding principle of a forum thread such as this, is positivism, in the fact that a scientific understanding of our world shows the remarkable workmanship of an intended and thought out design, versus the aetheistic stance that it all plopped into being by "chance", and (this one gives me great laughter), "man" is master of the universe... by chance of course. LOLOLOL.

Sir I have no probelm with scientific methodology at all, and it is you that are making claims about an evolution concept that is conjecture and specualation that has no elevation beyond hypothesis by scientific methodology and has no emperical support at all.

Claims and interpretations are everywhere, and dicernment and accurate judgement are rare within much of science today. Technological advancements and underpinings of knowledge were in large part done by hard working people and the puny fountain of claims and speculaion about evolution have had no beneficial impact.

Go gather all the knowledge of mankind with its assumptions and speculation that you want, and swallow all the philosphies of life, explore all the religions of the world, and you won't fubd Truth.

I'm sure that if you want to believe a hidden past existed, and that God is uninvolved, that basically darwinian speciation is true, and whatever else you hold to be true, has got nothing whatsoever to do with your most high and supported empirically and scientifically proved claims and interpretations.

I rather like to base my own claims and interpretations on the actual evidence, and dismiss the claims and interpretations for what they are as the case may be.

I keep running across things that appear to be simple statements with a grand shortage of any demonstration that the claims and interpretations are actually true.

When people claim to have knowledge of unobserved past, unknown process that no longer operate to gather empirical information on, and explain by complex stories and speculation, and then want me to accept it as methodologically sound scientifically, and empirically proven, while I don't know it kind of makek me sit in awe for a minute.

These kinds of things leave me dumbfounded.

Then it is apparent that the belief is the central issue, and no further discussion will avail us of anything.

Careful about using broadbrush generalizations. I am very clear about the fact I believe the system of this planet was designed. I see evolution as proof of the existence of a Great Architect, not the contrary stance. It shows the intelligence of craftmanship of survivability in a dynamic, albeit, brutally maligned, natural order.

As far as what is entailed in enlightenment, we can take that to another thread if you choose.