Evidence for God from Science

I know, I know, accept instead of except above.

The bottom line here is that if you reject God as the creator, you have to accept chance as your god or creator.

Make the WISER choice.....

touchingcloth wrote:

jlay wrote:That's like saying the reason we breath air is because air exists.

No - it's like saying we breathe air so it would be rather incredible if we found ourselves living on a world with a methane atmosphere.

touchingcloth - I perceive, then, you broke wind?


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robyn hill wrote: if there is evolution, which scientists certainly don't dispute, where beings become more intelligent with time,scientists all agree with this, and the universe has existed for, well, billions of years to say the least accoding to scientists, then wouldn't it be logical that a being more intelligent then us exists? It really almost seems silly that scientists procaim evolution, yet dismiss the possibility of a higher being.

Evolutionary theory doesn't state that "beings become more intelligent with time". And there is a huge difference between dismissing the possibility of any higher beings, and rejecting a particular higher being on the basis of the available evidence (but maintaining a willing openness to future data).

touchingcloth wrote:Evolutionary theory doesn't state that "beings become more intelligent with time". And there is a huge difference between dismissing the possibility of any higher beings, and rejecting a particular higher being on the basis of the available evidence (but maintaining a willing openness to future data).

How so? Evolutionary theory is not only predicting physical change but mental change as well. They go hand and hand. Have you ever studied the pragmatic movement?

As a philosophical movement, pragmatism originated in the United States in the late 1800s. The key figures of pragmatism where John Dewy, William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Charles Peirce. You might say that they were the first to offer “universal” Darwinism. The core of their thought was that if life evolved then the human mind has evolved as well and that all of the human sciences need to be rebuilt on that bases as well. That being philosophy, law, science, education, etc.. They stressed that our minds were the product of nature and nothing more. That mind was transcendent to the physical realm. Much like a mental natural selection where ideas arise in the human brain by chance, just like Darwin's chance variations in nature.

Would you like to see what Darwin wrote about the races?

Gman - "mental change" doesn't mean "increase in intelligence". Change might be increase, decrease, or inertia.

Gman wrote:

touchingcloth wrote:Evolutionary theory doesn't state that "beings become more intelligent with time". And there is a huge difference between dismissing the possibility of any higher beings, and rejecting a particular higher being on the basis of the available evidence (but maintaining a willing openness to future data).

How so? Evolutionary theory is not only predicting physical change but mental change as well. They go hand and hand. Have you ever studied the pragmatic movement?

As a philosophical movement, pragmatism originated in the United States in the late 1800s. The key figures of pragmatism where John Dewy, William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Charles Peirce. You might say that they were the first to offer “universal” Darwinism. The core of their thought was that if life evolved then the human mind has evolved as well and that all of the human sciences need to be rebuilt on that bases as well. That being philosophy, law, science, education, etc.. They stressed that our minds were the product of nature and nothing more. That mind was transcendent to the physical realm. Much like a mental natural selection where ideas arise in the human brain by chance, just like Darwin's chance variations in nature.

Would you like to see what Darwin wrote about the races?

Yes by all means, Gman - please do!

Also John Dewy, William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Charles Peirce were adherents of Evolutionary Socialism whose primary goal was to fundamentally transform America and the world… through he education system, sciences, and political structures…
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touchingcloth wrote:Gman - "mental change" doesn't mean "increase in intelligence". Change might be increase, decrease, or inertia.

How so? Someone might have more intelligence than another under evolutionary theory. Some randomly have developed more than others. Remember there is no God here.

Why all the studies then between the intelligence of monkeys compared to humans? According to this article humans and monkeys share machiavellian intelligence.

"Our Machiavellian intelligence is not something we can be proud of, but it may be the secret of our success. If it contributed to the evolution of our large brains and complex cognitive skills, it also contributed to the evolution of our ability to engage in noble spiritual and intellectual activities, including our love and compassion for other people", Maestripieri said."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 144314.htm

B. W. wrote:Yes by all means, Gman - please do!

Also John Dewy, William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Charles Peirce were adherents of Evolutionary Socialism whose primary goal was to fundamentally transform America and the world… through he education system, sciences, and political structures…
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Sure.. John Demey even wrote a famous essay called “The influence of Darwin on Philosophy” where he said Dawinism gives us a new logic for application to mind and morals and life. In this new evolutionary logic you don't judge ideas by some transcended standard of truth, by only by how well they work and getting people what they want. Even the same thing applies to religious ideas, William James, said that we as human beings ultimately wonder what ultimate reality is. Well science says that ultimate reality is molecules, but religion says it's God. So how do we decide which one is true? In other words, what is your truth?

John Dewey also defined learning as a form of “mental evolution.” He thought it should proceed the same way as biological evolution. Just like how biological organisms adapt to their environment, humans learn by confronting problems in their environment. A kind of mental adaptation or how to construct your own knowledge. As long as a group had a consensus that was considered valid. Knowledge is a social construction so whatever a group came up with was considered valid knowledge.

But the pragmatists face squarely the implications of Darwinism that is if evolution produced the mind then all our beliefs and all our convictions are nothing more than mental survival strategies. We got them because of what they do for us. Pragmatism in many ways is a precursor of today's post-modernism.

Richard Rory calls himself a neo-pragmatist because the end result of pragmatism is post modern skepticism. This is his slogan, “Truth is made rather than found.” He once wrote, “Keeping Faith with Darwin, means that all Ideas are as much products of chance as are tectonic plates and mutated viruses. Human species are not orientated with truth but only with it's own increased prosperity.”

It seems that knowledge itself has been split in half. One half is that Darwinism is to be taken to be factually true whereas religion and moral values are reduced to the status of wishful thinking. By the time students go off to college they have learned this lesson well. Students are perfectly willing to believe in objective truth in science but certainly not in ethics or morality. Values meaning individual religious preferences and facts binding on everyone.

And of course we could examine what Darwin said about the races.. Anyone want that info?

I am not making a generalization by saying "all "become more intelligent, but some, so evolution should actually support the idea of a higher intelligence evolving "somewhere" as a definite posssibility. To say that has not happened seems to go "against" the process of evolution. So Touching Cloth, I didn't realize that you do accept that as a possibilty as you mentioned earlier in the forum, is that right? So you are agnostic?

robyn hill wrote:I am not making a generalization by saying "all "become more intelligent, but some, so evolution should actually support the idea of a higher intelligence evolving "somewhere" as a definite posssibility. To say that has not happened seems to go "against" the process of evolution. So Touching Cloth, I didn't realize that you do accept that as a possibilty as you mentioned earlier in the forum, is that right? So you are agnostic?

Ah, with you now. Yes to a certain extent evolutionary theory will entertain the possibility of higher intelligence (or longer legs, or keener eyesight) occurring somewhere/sometime. That isn't to say that it is accepted as an eventual certainty; to use the leg length example there will be an upper limit on the length of a leg made out of bone and muscle at which point the leg will no longer be able to carry itself. To go to the intelligence example, it isn't certain that intelligence in humans will evolve unbidden until our ancestors have a deity-like intelligence; it may be that human intelligence is close to the upper limit of what can be provided by a mammalian brain. Don't forget that even the evolution of a super-intelligence doesn't necessarily warrant the name of a "higher being" - most posited gods are described with attributes such as transcendence/immortality/etc. as well as intelligence.

Yes I'm agnostic, and I identify as an atheist...but both those terms have very wide ranges of definitions depending on who you talk to.

touchingcloth wrote:To go to the intelligence example, it isn't certain that intelligence in humans will evolve unbidden until our ancestors have a deity-like intelligence; it may be that human intelligence is close to the upper limit of what can be provided by a mammalian brain. Don't forget that even the evolution of a super-intelligence doesn't necessarily warrant the name of a "higher being" - most posited gods are described with attributes such as transcendence/immortality/etc. as well as intelligence.

Well I respectfully disagree... Even evolutionist Daniel Clement claimed that Darwinism is a universal acid, it goes through everything. Consciousness itself is called an emerged property. And according to Darwin there are more evolved species of humans than others. You just can't get around that. Sorry...

Can't get around what, sorry?

Have you got a source for that Daniel Clement quote - I'm not familiar with him. However just as there are mechanical limits on what bodies can do (load bearing capabilities of bone restricts the size of terrestrial animals, power of muscle tissue restricts the size of flying animals) there are almost certainly limits to how large and intelligent brains can become (they overheat after a certain size, there's an optimum way in which brain tissue can be folded, and larger brains increase the time taken for signals to travel along neural pathways), if only because after a certain point a brain will need to become exponentially bigger to fuel a constant increase in intelligence (e.g. it could be the case that a brain twice the size provides less than twice the intelligence, but still requires twice the amount of resources to fuel it).

touchingcloth wrote:Can't get around what, sorry?

Have you got a source for that Daniel Clement quote - I'm not familiar with him.

More on him here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Clement_Dennett

He stated that along with the following statement in his book.

"But there is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination." - Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995) p.21 Evolutionist Daniel Clement Dennett

However just as there are mechanical limits on what bodies can do (load bearing capabilities of bone restricts the size of terrestrial animals, power of muscle tissue restricts the size of flying animals) there are almost certainly limits to how large and intelligent brains can become (they overheat after a certain size, there's an optimum way in which brain tissue can be folded, and larger brains increase the time taken for signals to travel along neural pathways), if only because after a certain point a brain will need to become exponentially bigger to fuel a constant increase in intelligence (e.g. it could be the case that a brain twice the size provides less than twice the intelligence, but still requires twice the amount of resources to fuel it).

The basic message of Darwinian evolution was that some humans were 'more evolved', in the sense of their divergence from apes, than others...

This is confirmed in one of his books “The Descent of Man."

"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes. . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla. (Darwin; “The Descent of Man”, 2nd ed. P.178)."

Regarding the relative size of the brain of savages, as compared to civilized man, Darwin writes:

“The belief that there exists in man some close relation between the size of the brain and the development of the intellectual faculties is supported by the comparison of the skulls of savage (black people) and civilized races (white people), of ancient and modern people, and by the analogy of the whole vertebrate series. …Professor Broca found that the nineteenth century skulls from graves in Paris were larger than those from vaults of the twelfth century, in the proportion of 1484 to 1426; and that the increased size, as ascertained by measurements, was exclusively in the frontal part of the skull—the seat of the intellectual faculties." According to Darwin, blacks had a smaller skull cavity (or brain size) than the whites.. Because of this genetic trait, whites were ultimately superior to blacks who were thus called the savagerace...

Early on in Descent, Darwin discusses various aspects of man he deems significant. Regarding the shape of the human and sub-human ear Darwin writes:

“It has been asserted that the ear of man alone possesses a lobule; but 'a rudiment of it is found in the gorilla;' and, as I hear from Prof. Preyer, it is not rarely absent in the negro” (p.15).

Of the sense of smell:

“… But the sense of smell is of extremely slight service, if any, even to the dark colored races of men, in whom it is much more highly developed than in white and civilized races”(p.18 )

Nobody has mentioned the fact that we only use a small percentage of our minds, that we are only wired to use a small percent of our minds. What if we could use all of our mind, would new senses evolve? I don't know just a thought. Also, Touching cloth, do you really think it is another coincidence that we can build the technology we have with the same materials we started out with? Doesn't that seem a wee remarkable? Top this with all the other "chance" occurences and a few more I want to add, and you really have to have alot of faith in chance.