Hi MD,
Thanks again for your response. It is a pleasure discussing this with you as opposed to the flame war with mike the wiz and Faith.
quote:
I suppose in doing this I'm making an appeal to the Scriptures as follows:
While I don't doubt you believe deeply in your Scriptures, I have several problems with such appeals that Percy has also made.
First, without defining or establishig that there is a god to begin with, it makes it harder to accept that words spread first by word of mouth and then written down and then translated multiple times into different versions are the word of god. All of this is the reiteration of beliefs of men written by men and not direct from god to person interaction. There is no reason to consider Scripture of one religion more representative of god (or gods if you are Hindu for example) than any other from an objective point of view.
I would think that an all powerful god could be defined without recourse to second or third hand information contained in human produced works.
quote:
However, even with God conceived as Spirit (with spirit implying mostly "inspiration" in this context), we can see that an inspiration within a real person's mind can lead to tangible actions.
In a similar way, at least hypothetically, the universe itself seems to have been inspired into existance by God alone. In other words, just as real people can think about intangible thoughts which nonetheless manifest as tangible actions -- God can think of the universe (which would be intangible to him) in order to manifest tangible actions (such as his incarnation within his own creation).
I think here a problem is that the intangible process of thought if using a highly reductionist approach is observed, it consists of chemical reactions in your body. The creation of the universe has left traces of what happened i.e. big bang but there is no evidence for thinking it into being. My point is, on the one hand we can correlate thought or inspiration with actual physical and chemical events (though admittedly this is not completely understood) but regarding the universe, thus far only the chemical and physical processes involved i.e. natural phenomenon can be detected and measured. Any divine involvement is a matter of belief at this point.
quote:
I will try. But again, I may fail.
Don't worry. This is not a test. I am just trying to see your point of view and tell you where I am coming from. I think our posts back and forth thus far have been successful in this regard.
quote:
However, if we're looking past purely philosophical discusions and trying to ascertain an example of this "intangible reality" in scientific terms, one may well be able to point toward various string theorists and find a scientific metaphor there.
Before I proceed further, it is important to realize that no string theory has yet made firm predictions that would allow it to be experimentally tested.
As a molecular biologist, I won't pretend to understand string theory...or much else in physics for that matter. However, many fields start with speculation and hypothesizing that can lead to concrete experiments that then confirm or refute a given hypothesis or a part of it. But I am a bit confused as to how hypotheses of extra dimensions would imply that god exists or would allow one to define what god is in the first place? Could you elaborate?
quote:
This may be true. But the hard-wiring of their mind seems to be neurologically wound so that rapid mega-couplings of information can be perceived very quickly -- far more rapid (in discreet areas) than you or I could even conceive.
I'm simply suggesting that their rapid grasp of information may be similar to the prophets of old whose minds were extremely hard-wired to be attentive to God's patterns in the universe.
Remember: This is only a suggestion.
At this point it is hard to say. I don't know that the characteristics of prophets would necessarily be considered autistic or savant as from the descriptions I have read, they did not suffer the handicaps that usually afflict such people i.e. many savants are called idiot savants because they excel at say rote learning but cannot even feed themselves. But hopefully at some point we will get a better picture of how the brain works...and hopefully it will benefit those who suffer from autism etc. while not diminishing the abilities in which they excel. It's a long way off though.
quote:
No. You are exactly correct. On a scientific level I see no reason to doubt why evolutionary mechanisms couldn't have done it. Admittedly, I still think that we still have much to learn in this area. This is to say, I think the theory of evolution is the best purely materialistic explanation for our origins going to date.
It is only on a faith based level that I am reticent of some evolutionary thoughts -- and this comes specifically from my own understanding of the Scriptures. If evolution was indeed the cause of life on earth, then I would be searching for an excelent theistic evolutioanry explanation to accompany it -- which I haven't seen yet.
Evolution does not explain the "causes of life" or the origin of life. That is a subject called abiogenesis. Evolution only explains the changes that occur after life has formed i.e. it is ultimately the changes in allele frequencies over time which necessitates that life exists. Thus evolutionary theory has a lot to say and a lot of evidence accumulated as to how bacteria, horses, viruses etc. change over time...but not how all life began.
quote:
As is, based on my own understanding of the Scriptures, I believe that man was created nearly instantaniously and virtually ex nihilo from the dust of the earth.
I don't understand how something could be created virtually ex nihilo but I think this is too narrow an interpretation. There is also quite a bit of evidence against a unique creation of humans.
I think the conflict between science and religion only comes when people worship the words a book rather than their own faith or belief in the spiritual. I think the theistic evolutionist view is that god/or gods created the universe and physics, chemistry, and biology (of which evolution is a pillar of the discipline) were the tools he/she/it/they used. Scriptures are then metaphors used to disseminate the core belief to a public that may have various backgrounds. Just my opinion though. Since I am a non-believer I cannot really speak for theistic evolutionists. But those I have had contact with have expressed opinions that overlap at least with what I said.
cheers,
M
™ Version 4.2