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Author Topic:   What we must accept if we accept evolution Part 2
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7799
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 178 of 301 (283087)
02-01-2006 8:43 AM
Reply to: Message 175 by robinrohan
02-01-2006 8:15 AM


Re: nihilism and evolution
Because this concept of an evolutionary God makes no sense, in that he is bound to be either a cruel or weak God, we must reject the idea of God. We can also reject a Deistic God for the same reson. A God that made the world and then went away would be cruelly indifferent to the sufferings of his creatures.
So because the grand architect of the universe, the purpose of our existence, and objective morality, happens to be cruel by your definition. How does that mean that there isn't a purpose? It doesn't follow. For example:
a) You are wrong about God's motivation, and he turns out to not be cruel when you look at the big picture
b) God is exceedingly cruel. The purpose of life is to become as cruel as God so that you will be deiefied.
c) God is indifferent, the purpose of life is to get God to pay us some attention.
A pagan believes in natural Gods (or any rate, might do so). Natural gods are gods that spring up out of nature somehow, rather than creating nature. If you spring out of nature, then you are not the creator of nature.
Slavic Paganism creation story starts with
quote:
In the beginning, there were no earth and no people, only the primordial sea.
Indeed, slavic Paganism has both a Good creator God and and evil Creator God. Hinduism has a creator, a destroyer and a maintainer.
We, as human beings, have no formal purpose. A formal purpose is an objective purpose. It is that purpose for which something is made by its creator.
What you are saying is that if we weren't created for a purpose, we don't have a purpose. An interesting theological issue would be 'what is God's purpose?'. However, our purpose could be to suffer for the eyes of a cruel God. It could be that our purpose is to get back into the graces of a merciful God.

Your conclusions:
Creationism is the only logical theistic belief.
Any other form of Christianity is not logical
Creationism and evolution are contradictory
Theism is logically contradictory to evolution OR your belief is logically contradictory with itself.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 175 by robinrohan, posted 02-01-2006 8:15 AM robinrohan has not replied

Modulous
Member
Posts: 7799
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 190 of 301 (283153)
02-01-2006 11:37 AM
Reply to: Message 187 by jar
02-01-2006 11:16 AM


quote mining
Creationist: Didn't Darwin say:
quote:
To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree
Evo: Its jerked out of context
Creationist: But is it an accurate quote of what he said?
jar writes:
Is this an accurate quote of what you said?
The answer is yes, but it is a mined quote. The very next sentence at least should be added, if not the rest of the paragraph:
rr writes:
By God I mean all-good, all-powerful God, which I believe is your standard Western version of God. When I say one cannot believe in God and evolution at the same time, I mean logically you can not. Of course, you can believe emotionally or irrationally anything you damned well please, and so can anyone else.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 187 by jar, posted 02-01-2006 11:16 AM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 191 by jar, posted 02-01-2006 11:46 AM Modulous has not replied
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Modulous
Member
Posts: 7799
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 241 of 301 (283907)
02-04-2006 1:38 PM
Reply to: Message 237 by nwr
02-04-2006 10:53 AM


Induction
Induction is not valid. Fortunately, science does not require any such assumption.
What? Are you sure you mean that. Induction plays a large role in science, that is why theories are tentative. As wiki says:
All observed crows are black
tentative conclusion: all crows are black.
Our crows are black theory can be falsified at any time by the observation of a non-black crow.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 237 by nwr, posted 02-04-2006 10:53 AM nwr has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 244 by nwr, posted 02-04-2006 2:08 PM Modulous has replied

Modulous
Member
Posts: 7799
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 247 of 301 (283924)
02-04-2006 2:29 PM
Reply to: Message 244 by nwr
02-04-2006 2:08 PM


Re: Induction
Induction: The process of deriving general principles from particular facts or instances.
Whenever I let go of my pen, it falls.
My pen will always fall when I let go of it
This will be falsified if my pen doesn't fall at any time that I drop it.
Did Darwin inspect every single organism to conclude that they are share a common ancestor? Have we inspected every organism today?
Are you (or is wiki) claiming that no albino crow has ever been observed? That would surely be surprising and worthy of investigation.
Must you take it so literally? If I was to show you the classic: All red cars are fast, my car is red, therefore my car is fast syllogism you would say "Not all cars are red!"
Of course, not all crows are black, it has been falsified already. That's science. Make a general statement based on what we know now, but say "observation x will falsify this theory".
Science is always making inductions, constantly...and its perfectly valid. One can never know a certainty from induction. All inductive conclusions are tentative. As long as we are always aware that induction is flawed, and maintain no absolute certainties (ie tentativity), then induction is a valid way to come to tentative conclusions.
This message has been edited by Modulous, Sat, 04-February-2006 07:31 PM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 244 by nwr, posted 02-04-2006 2:08 PM nwr has replied

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Modulous
Member
Posts: 7799
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 264 of 301 (284116)
02-05-2006 10:28 AM


What has been resolved
I'm still yet to see any of the following being necessary:
Materialism
Determinism
Atheism
Nihilism
The only thing that seems to have been resolved is that accepting evolution (in the broad rather than the theory) does mean rejecting the God of creationism... which seems fairly apparant.
Any other god is fair game, unless that god also specially created life as-is. A good god can still be behind it, working on a 'for the Greater Good' idea that we are ignorant of. A cruel god could be behind it. An indifferent god could be behind it.
Materialism isn't necessary, evolution doesn't mean rejecting spirits, djinn, avatars, angels, mind as incorpereal entity, most gods etc.

Modulous
Member
Posts: 7799
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 271 of 301 (284144)
02-05-2006 1:17 PM
Reply to: Message 265 by robinrohan
02-05-2006 11:02 AM


A self is not possible without incorporeality.
OK.
Evolution explains our origins naturalistically. Before evolutionary ideas came along, there was no way to explain the creatures of the earth being here except by invoking gods. There is now no logical need for god.
There isn't a need for gods to explain the divergence of life. That doesn't logically mean there is an absence of gods.
Evolution, being a very cruel process, tells us that no good, all-powerful God would operate in this fashion. You can talk about the "greater good" all you like--and then imagine some particularly gruesome birth defect--and ask yourself if there can be any greater good that would justify that.
Easy peasy. Eternity in the Kingdom of Heaven. If the choices were oblivion (non-existence) or existing for a tiny time period in suffering and the rest of eternity in bliss and paradise... I'd say the greater good is served.
A cruel or weak god is inconceivable.
I can as easily concieve a cruel god as I can conceive a good god. Why can't you? Indeed, I can even easier conceive a god that isn't so 2 dimensional, and whose decisions have massive ethical ramifications.
That's why nobody believes in such a being.
Which is actually not true. Currrently, its rare, but Greek, Roman, Slavic, Egyptian...indeed most gods before Yahweh were at times cruel, petty, and at times indifferent to human suffering. Yahweh seems to have been that way inclined at one time.
The logical fallacy here is quite apparant - "The reason why nobody believes in an indifferent god is because it doesn't exist". Why would anyone believe in an indifferent god? He wouldn't reveal himself to us would he?
Darwinism is ultimately a nihilistic idea. We are here for no reason.
Darwinism doesn't say this. Darwinism is dead in the water. Evolutionism doesn't give a reason for our existence, nor does it say that we have no reason. It merely provides a physical explanation for the diversity of life. It says HOW we are here, not WHY we are here.
TOE is not an innocuous liitle idea about population changes: it is an idea that shakes the foundations of the traditional concept of humanity.
Despite my demonstrating to you the fundamental difference in terminology you are using. You refer to COMMON ANCESTRY, not ToE. ToE is an explanatory framework for describing population change. Common ancestry says that all organisms share a common ancestor.
Which DOES shake the foundation of the traditional concept of humanity.
However:
Evolution does not say that the "I" is purely physical. Naturalists and materialists say this. Neurologists might say this. They would point to evolutiuon as the reason how it happened. However, if a mind does exist beyond the physical, ToE is incapable of describing it and science cannot detect it.
Evolution does not imply that gods, cruel, indifferent, demi or semi don't exist.
Evolution does not lead to nihilism. There might be a god and he might have given us purpose. He might not be immediately nice, he might even be cruel, or he might be serving some cosmic good to us that we are incapable of seeing.
Thus: Athiesm isn't needed to be accepted. Only a cruel god or a god that appears cruel but turns out not to be or a god that is not related to the creation of humanity.
As such neither materialism nor determinism need to be accepted.
Nihilism of course doesn't need to be accepted if a cruel or ultimately kind god exists.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 265 by robinrohan, posted 02-05-2006 11:02 AM robinrohan has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 284 by robinrohan, posted 02-06-2006 3:08 PM Modulous has replied

Modulous
Member
Posts: 7799
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 285 of 301 (284429)
02-06-2006 3:28 PM
Reply to: Message 284 by robinrohan
02-06-2006 3:08 PM


It doesn't literally say it, no. It implies it logically.
No it doesn't imply no purpose, it just doesn't provide one. You think that because we weren't specially created 'as is' by a good creator god that logically implies there is no purpose?
I have provided several possile purposes to life which are perfectly in keeping with evolution. Just because you cannot conceive of a purpose with evolution, does not imply that there isn't one.
I've been trying to figure that out. I think there's something self-contradictory about the phrase "cruel God." When someone says, "God is cruel," it really means that they don't believe in God.
I'm not talking about God (yahweh). I am talking about a hypothetical god. A creator god that happens to be cruel. Such a god can exist, have created us for a purpose and have created the 'cruel' evolutionary process. That is theologically consistent with a cruel god and logically consistent with evolution, assuming evolution is cruel.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 284 by robinrohan, posted 02-06-2006 3:08 PM robinrohan has not replied

Replies to this message:
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