What to believe, crisis of faith

My, you are a man of few words today nwr At the risk of being told otherwise, I'll assume "there are no absolute truths" is your opinion then.Right: It is absolutely true we are all going to die physically? If it isn't absolutely true, what kind of true (if true at all) is it: partial, a matter of opinion etc. In your view, I mean

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"Jesus wept" John 11:35. It's the shortest verse in the Bible. What caused him to weep? Anothers death....

I don't want to get bogged down in a pointless dispute about alleged self-refutation. We are also getting a tad off topic for this thread.If there is a serious interest in a genuine discussion of "What is truth", I could propose a new thread. At present it doesn't look serious. What is absolutely true? Are you talking about your meaning of "we are all going to die physically?", or about my meaning, or about somebody else's meaning? And how can you even be sure what others mean?You cannot have absolute truth without absolute meaning. And meaning is not absolute (except perhaps in mathematics and formal logic).

Hi Iano,I'd like to get your thoughts regarding message #191, if you would be so kind.

Fair enough...

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"Jesus wept" John 11:35. It's the shortest verse in the Bible. What caused him to weep? Anothers death....

When you buy a video recorder, the instruction manual explains how to programme. It doesn't give you a theory. That's what I meant by "no explanation". Science can speculate that mans ability to love, for example, is an evolution of some animal behaviour but the links it makes are theoretical not factual. I have mentioned a few times that incredulity is not an argument against something (be it God or Evolution). Similarily, credulity is not an argument for something. If you presume evolution to be true then links made between animals and man will appear credible - despite the obvious gulf between the two.Any similarity between man and animal can as easily be described by common design as by common descent. Stalemate??

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"Jesus wept" John 11:35. It's the shortest verse in the Bible. What caused him to weep? Anothers death....

In fact they are highly theoretical. Mayr attempts to make the transition by use of inclusive fitness but he acomplishes this not by use of the "fact" of evolution so-callled but by a 'fact' Darlington made which served to reorient his interpretation of the "Morgan" school (Sturtevant,Morgan,myGrandfather,etc) seperating biology no matter the theory into proximate and ultimate divisions. Mayr generalized from some disagreements resolved on his view of theory to the actual state of inclusive fitness in primates and he did this by noticing logically where natural selection does NOT occur, rather than using the relevance of this suspicion not in th exclusion of logical contents but as a place of possible non-dynamic research. Somehow scholars such as these associated "determinism" with NOT very high probability as a mistake. That was very theoretical and not at all how people think about it on a day to day basis. Sorry for being so technical.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 09-23-2005 08:52 AM

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When you buy a video recorder, the instruction manual explains how to programme. It doesn't give you a theory. That's what I meant by "no explanation". Science can speculate that mans ability to love, for example, is an evolution of some animal behaviour but the links it makes are theoretical not factual.

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Let me explain something to you regarding what "scientific theories" are.Scientific theories are the organizers and explanations of why the facts appear as they do.Theory is based wholly upon fact.The Theory of a Heliocentric Solar System, the Atomic Theory of Matter, and Gravitational Theory are all based in the observation of facts, all of which which are then organized and explained by the theory.There is also hypothesis and speculation, neither of which are as fleshed out or factually supported as theories.The point is, science has fact-supported theories to explain much of what you say it can't regarding human traits and behavior.

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I have mentioned a few times that incredulity is not an argument against something (be it God or Evolution).

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Indeed.So, when are you going to go through the list of fact-based scientific explanations I provided for you and try to counter them using your own facts?

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Similarily, credulity is not an argument for something. If you presume evolution to be true then links made between animals and man will appear credible - despite the obvious gulf between the two.

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Indeed.So, when are you going to go through the list of fact-based scientific explanations I provided for you and try to counter them using your own facts?If this gulf is "so obvious" it should be childs play for you to refute every item on the list with your own scientific evidence, correct?

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Any similarity between man and animal can as easily be described by common design as by common descent. Stalemate??

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We have both directly observed common descent and inferred it from copious evidence found in nature.There is no need to resort to a magical, unknown entity.Occam's Razor applies.Of course, if you wish to leave science and believe in a common designer without evidence, you are free to, but then you have to ask yourself why the "common designer" seems to make so many dumb design descisions.Like, why did the designer put a thin, sharp ridge of bone on the inside of our skulls such that our brains are frequently damaged on it if we hit our heads?Why did the designer make our lower backs and knees so weak and poorly-designed for upright locomotion?Why were we designed with crossover food and air pipes, such that we are very vulnerable to choking to death on food?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 09-23-2005 09:03 AM

Actually, that's not entirely accurate. Describing it as common design is really a lot easier. You only have to say it, and that's that. No real argument is needed except that it should be obvious to anyone.If you describe it as common descent, on the other hand, you have to introduce and explain things like genes, mutations, and selective pressure and such, which takes a certain amount of scientific education from both you and your interlocutor, which in turn takes time and effort and requires some level of intelligence. It's not so easy.That's why less well-educated people so often resort to the first type of explanation. It doesn't demand much knowledge or understanding of nature, and usually there's a ready-made candidate for the role of the designer, in the form of the deity of the day, accomodating the need for some authoritative backing. All things considered, it's an "explanation" that doesn't really explain anything. But it's easy.

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

Here we have one of the bits of fact-based evidence you provided. Could you point out any fact in it. Anything in it that is known for sure which indicates a link between man and chimp along speech lines. Note the provisional language which peppers it. Note to the presumptive language that implies the link exists and sees the evidence in the light of the presumption. Where is the factual evidence or observation which alone is what can support the theory? Common descent all the way back to........what precisely? Isn't it curious that ToE stops short and assumes a self-replicating life form from which it all cascades. In doing so, does ToE resort to a magical and unknown entity itself?A book of evidence isn't a case Schraf, it's a book of evidence. Don't let a bucketful of assertion fool you into thinking otherwise.... No evidence of common design? Try it yourself. Form a hypothesis: Goddidit - the same magical, mystery start that is abiogenesis. Look for common design and see can you find any. It should take about 3 seconds to arrive at the knowledge that there would be pages and pages of commonality of design you could list.As to perceived imperfections. Firstly you would have to know what the designer intended and why in order to objectively judge imperfection. Do human designers build in life-time into their machines. Do they build in imperfection. Sure they do. For sound commercial reasons. The design is built as it is for a purpose. Gods purpose is not that our bodies would live forever. Thank God for it. Like who'd want to live forever in this world?

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"Jesus wept" John 11:35. It's the shortest verse in the Bible. What caused him to weep? Anothers death....

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Any similarity between man and animal can as easily be described by common design as by common descent. Stalemate??

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The similarities - and differences - that enable this analysis to work are best described in terms of descent with modification i.e. evolution.

Goddidit doesn't bring an end to scientific pursuit. It simply brings an end to the science of atheistic origin. Which is a relatively tiny proportion of the whole. So what if it comes to an end? Like it's not that ToE does anything particularily useful in a practical sense - unlike so many other sciences Circa 40% of scientists when surveyed by Nature magazine in 1997 (vol 386, pp 435-6) said they believed in God (see link). Could we, for the sake of economy assume there are scientists out there who reckon Goddidit? Does that make them less-well educated than scientists who reckon he didn't?A STATISTICAL ENQUIRY

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"Jesus wept" John 11:35. It's the shortest verse in the Bible. What caused him to weep? Anothers death....

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Common descent all the way back to........what precisely? Isn't it curious that ToE stops short and assumes a self-replicating life form from which it all cascades. In doing so, does ToE resort to a magical and unknown entity itself?

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Iano, what was the name, hair color, height, weight, and place of birth of your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather?If you can't tell me, I don't believe that any such person existed.Also, the ToE examines what happened to life once it got here. It doesn't care how it got here. God could have poofed the first life into existence and it wouldn't change one thing about the ToE.That is the scope of the theory. We would no more expect the ToE to explain where the first life comes from than we would the stydy of Aerodynamics to explain where wind comes from.What you want to argue about is Abiogenesis, which is chemistry.

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A book of evidence isn't a case Schraf, it's a book of evidence. Don't let a bucketful of assertion fool you into thinking otherwise....

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IOW, according to you, if it walks like a duck, sound like a duck, looks like a duck, tastes like a duck, and feels like a duck, I shouldn't conclude that what I'm examining is most likely a duck, and those silly Biologists are just asserting that it's a duck?Why would a designer design our skulls with a sharp ridge on the inside, commonly a source of brain injury, iano?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 09-25-2005 08:11 AM

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Like it's not that ToE does anything particularily useful in a practical sense - unlike so many other sciences

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Population Genetics isn't useful, according to you?Please explain.

Absolutely it does. Once you've answered "Goddidit", where do you go from there? What coherent line of questioning can emerge from that position that you can examine in the natural world? "Why did God do it?" No, you can't really ask that; the answer is usually "for his own reasons, which we can't understand."The "Goddidit" position is one that says "we can't understand." It gives up before it even tries. How can science proceed from a position that abandons inquiry? I'd like to see you try to tell that to my wife, who is currently involved in a line of research, inextricably informed by the theory of evolution, that could improve the yield of the nation's corn crops by, perhaps, 40%.Practical sense? The only reason that biology is at all practical is due to the predictive, explanitory power of the theory of evolution. Without evolution biology is just stamp collecting; it's just giving random names to organisms without being able to examine their relationships to each other and to their environments. Why do we find one critter here and not there? Without evolution there's no explanation (besides "Goddiddit" which, as I've proven, isn't really an explanation at all, but an act of giving up the search for an explanation.) Why would a scientist, even one who believed in God, shoot themselves in the foot like that? What inquiry or results are possible from abandoning the search for an explanation?

iano, Since you bring up the subject of practical usage, ID actually does nothing whatsoever of any practical use, which is as Schraf points out, less than the ToE on at least one score.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't