The moral implications of evolution, and their discontents.

Most of this post is off topic. Please pick what you respond to carefully.I agree with most of this only what is the limit of these inherited characteristics caused by mutation?Any one kind of creature can only vary within a range.Between 5 and 10 thousands of years of written history indicates that all dog kinds produce dog kinds. Mutation has only ever proved to result in loss of information or no noticeable change. Addition of say new organs in a stepwise progression has never been observed.Will dog hair ever change to say scales or wings or will it only potentially change to no hair or messed up hair or some other variation of dog hair? All the assembly instructions are in the DNA and natural selection selects, there is no proof that it invents anything new. Small mistakes in a perfect set of instructions may produce morphological variations that may survive or may not (given enough mistakes) but can mutation produce instructions for something new? There is no evidence for that only the conviction that that can happen given lots of time.
Time is the magical factor that turns observable science into supposition.The fossil record shows variations of all sorts of things but will time turn a dog kind into something that we would say is clearly not a dog? All that we can actually say about a fossil is that it was alive and it died (and was covered quickly or it would have rotted and there would be no evidence of it having existed.)We cannot link one kind of fossil creature to any other kind categorically because we do not know whether it produced any live offspring much less something completely different to itself. All visible breeding only shows kind breeding same kind with limits to its variability so why would we imagine that long ago and far away, one kind gradually (or suddenly-punctuated equilibrium) produced a completely different kind, for example ape-like creature to man say. Precisely, either true or untrue and that is where the disagreement comes in.But there are further implications -if all kinds of creatures are, in fact, linked to a single ancestral population then mutation creates completely new structures and evidently an increase in genetic information and that cannot be proven. That also means that that original ancestral population had to have come from non-living chemicals that came to life.
The ToE stipulates random undirected processes which by implication limits God totally by excluding Him COMPLETELY as originator of the substance and constituents of the universe.
There is no version of currently accepted evolutionary theory which involves God as a causative process in any way. An incognito creator is as good as no creator.So evolution makes a statement that is atheistic in philosophy. Except that God is implicitly out of a job and only appears to hover in the background for theistic evolutionists as a placebo of kinds despite his non-function. Either God exists or he does not -that completely changes the picture and the results in people's lives.
If we live, die and get buried and rot and there is no God, then there are no consequences to ignoring our consciences. We are free to make our own laws of life that we live by and relative morality results from that. Losing God causes lower moral standards because we become our own boss and the only consequence that matters is if we get caught doing what men say we shouldn't.If there is a God who created us then we know -{Imperfect Bible quote in proverbs or psalms somewhere -can't check now}."shall He that created the eye, not see?" "shall He that created the ear not hear?" If God created us to see and to hear it is because He can see us and hear us (our thoughtsincluded since He created our brains as well.)
If God exists and knows and watches every move we make, that's powerful incentive to keep up some standards in every situation apart from human law. For those that do not believe he exists, we may have some standards taught to us - but saying to your child "do it because I said so" is not nearly so powerful as God said so.Abortion -it's fine because of public consensus. If God says it's not? Then what do you choose?
Without God, society inevitably has declining standards until complete rot sets in.For once, I may be on topic -I really hope so. Edited by AdminNosy, : topic warning

Well maybe that means you grew up and decided what your standards would be. I assume you grew up a nominal 'Christian' much like myself having no particular clue until 'science' changed your mind.
Apart from that, you are nonetheless in a minority I would think since Christianity tends to bring more awareness of where one is going wrong. Unless you take God's standards as that ( of course if there is no God as you clearly believe, then yes you would be right) Relative to what? To each other? I don't know, am I living in a different world? -I just see corruption, thieving, murdering, hijacking, raping (and here in South Africa, most of it doesn't even get reported) and yes there are some normal people, but overall standards are certainly dropping. Well if materialism is all there is -if there is only change in allele frequencies accounting for everything we see and every bit of life that exists, then it's survival of the fittest (or most selfish) and why not? ???Where did you read that into what I said? I'm not afraid of punishment, I don't have to be. I'm afraid for the people that believe there is no God.If I ever try to convince someone that God exists, I'm not doing it for myself, I already know God is real.
Your own morality can never save you from God's judgement. You can be as moral as you like and you're still lost.
I grew up moral and I thought 'if there is a God, I'm sure he'll be quite happy with me, I'm doing alright'. I was wrong.
Anyway, apart from that -the world is generally corrupt and getting worse.I absolutely believe that belief in evolution, in its fullest sense (meaning there is no God, only matter and chance), helps that degeneration.
If there is no God AND your parents don't teach you (they're too busy) things go downhill. Maybe it's pure mutation - but something's going on and it's not an uphill change.By the way, anyone from admin, whatever I say will be off topic and ludicrous and laughable on this site (it is an evolutionist's site) so suspend me -my internet is so slow, I won't even notice because that's how long it takes me to open a page.

Neither do you. Ray's wrong, you're right, it works both ways. Personally....Ray makes far more sense to me -(just my stupid creationist opinion).

Evolution and its moral implications, not really racism though I must say if I were black I'd find evolution a bit tough to swallow.
Evolutionary thought really justified apartheid to some. Others just pointed to Cain who got cursed and became the local slave and said that's why black people must follow not lead. So in a sense, both evolution and a form of cultic Christianity (take what you like out of the Bible, leave out anything that points in another direction) justified it in other people's minds. Actually, since you asked -heard about the new movie coming out in Feb 2008 called 'Expelled' -see 'expelled.com' I think. Sounds great to me -should cause a few waves in the ongoing battle of discrimination against opposing viewpoints.Not great for evolutionists though.Can't find any thread discussing it but it takes me so long to check things out that I may be wrong. Actually I think about it and read about it day and night whenever I
get a chance and I have no doubt I've reached reasonable conclusions even though they obviously make no sense to you.

Evolution and its moral implications, not really racism though I must say if I were black I'd find evolution a bit tough to swallow.
Evolutionary thought really justified apartheid to some. Others just pointed to Cain who got cursed and became the local slave and said that's why black people must follow not lead. So in a sense, both evolution and a form of cultic Christianity (take what you like out of the Bible, leave out anything that points in another direction) justified it in other people's minds. Actually, since you asked -heard about the new movie coming out in Feb 2008 called 'Expelled' -see 'expelledthemovie.com' I think. Sounds great to me - should cause a few waves in the ongoing battle against viewpoint discrimination. Not great for evolutionists though. Can't find any thread discussing it but it takes me so long to check things out that I may be wrong.
Also see article http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/oct/07100505.html Actually I think about it and read about it day and night whenever I
get a chance and I have no doubt I've reached reasonable conclusions even though they obviously make no sense to you.

All the versions that point to random undirected mutation as the mechanism for evolution -there is no other version - God is excluded a priori from the ToE. Well yes, God made life where there was no life and he built variation into the genome in order that all the things created could diversify and thus survive hard times.That'll be abiogenesis and microevolution or variation.However, there's no reason or evidence to make us believe that the entire creation process had to start at one-celled organisms or simpler and carry on pretty much on its own.Can't your God be intelligent enough to have created all the kinds (kind of like works of art) and put them on the earth as described in Genesis? Who's limiting God here?

Well because people tend to use evolution as a base for their racist tendencies - as if some people groups are not so 'evolved' Like when people used to shoot aboriginees to send their skulls to natural history museums as missing links.Like when Hitler justified his actions with his hit list which labelled Jews as 'close to pure ape' and blacks as 'mostly ape' (and of course next on the elimination list.) No. I know that's its just the amount of melanin pigment in the skin that varies.But nonetheless refer to my first point above. No not actually, even Hitler would have let me live.I find evolution tough to swallow because the evidence is underwhelming and all the classic icons of evolution are misrepresented -everything scientific that goes against the evolutionary conclusions are left out in the textbooks -it's called 'deception by omission'.

Well maybe not on this site though I doubt it. The evidence against evolution is being presented all over the world at universities everywhere by ID and creationist proponents -I don't think you haven't heard it -perhaps your brain switches off at the point that they begin to present their case but it is out there nonetheless. Which thread would you like me to take it to?

Well Chiroptera I'll have to give you some points there -a lot of racism is based on perverting scripture for justification for hatred towards other races -but it is a perversion of Christianity since the Bible specifically says to 'love your neighbour as yourself' and so many other things that point in the same direction.Some religions specifically exhort their followers to cut off the infidels heads if they refuse to convert (eg.Islam) so when they do that they are being true to their religious book -which is why it is obvious to me (and many others) that Allah and the Christian God are not one and the same. Think how much easier it is to justify genocide if you believe in survival of the fittest though. It sure gets a message across and if there is no God, then why worry.Hitler used the Roman Catholic church as a front to reassure his followers -he used to pose in front of the church but he was actually an evolutionist in thought and believed fully that some races were less evolved and on that basis he devised his hit list with the Jews at the top. They weren't people and didn't deserve to live according to him so he could use them like the less evolved animals he believed they were for experiments.
I suppose since the Roman Catholic church comes up for evolution that may say something for the connection -just a thought.

Have to find another thread or I will be banished once again.