The Greater Miracle

I'm not sure how many times I have to repeat it. I have no problem with evolution. I have zero background in bilology so I'm not qualified to argue for or against it, but the vast majority of prople who are qualified support the theory of evovlution which is good enough for me. I'll accept that I'm a theistic evolutionist with the proviso that I'm not saying that based on a personal knowledge of the biological foundation for it.

Certainly, my world view is not only influenced but formed by my religious beliefs. If I was an Atheist I would form my world view based on that. And what verifiable evidence would that be? How do you verify what isn't verifiable. Can you verify that the material world is all that there is? You just believe it. You can't verify it, so you take it on faith.By the way, I don't assume that everyone holds the same world view that I do.

Where else do you see me making an exception? What do you think I believe that is contradicted by empirical evidence?I could ask you; why is it that you believe that you just happen to exist through completely natural causes, when it could be caused by an intelligent creator?

There is no evidence that supernatural beings don't exist. I am assuming that your belief is that you exist with all of your emotions due to strictly material causes. Show me the empirical proof for that? If you can't then you take it on faith that you are correct. And what assumptions do you think I'm making? Sure you can verify the natural world, or at least many aspects of it but you can't verify that the so-called natural world is all that there is.

I don't disagree at all. My only point in 73 that I intended, was that science provides theories that are subjective. In most cases they then look for objective evidence to support their subjective theories. (Even then that isn't always the case though. How about Dawkins and his "memes" for example.)I agree however that religious views are subjective and can never be confirmed objectively. That doesn't mean that they aren't valid. Only partly. I believe that the basic Christianity is true for everyone although I would agree that everyone has a unique role to play within the Christian framework. That has nothing whatsoever to do with science, and it is not in contradiction with science in any way.Here is an interesting article that was in the NY Times not long ago.

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The End of Philosophy

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By DAVID BROOKS

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Socrates talked. The assumption behind his approach to philosophy, and the approaches of millions of people since, is that moral thinking is mostly a matter of reason and deliberation: Think through moral problems. Find a just principle. Apply it.
One problem with this kind of approach to morality, as Michael Gazzaniga writes in his 2008 book, Human, is that it has been hard to find any correlation between moral reasoning and proactive moral behavior, such as helping other people. In fact, in most studies, none has been found.
Today, many psychologists, cognitive scientists and even philosophers embrace a different view of morality. In this view, moral thinking is more like aesthetics. As we look around the world, we are constantly evaluating what we see. Seeing and evaluating are not two separate processes. They are linked and basically simultaneous.
As Steven Quartz of the California Institute of Technology said during a recent discussion of ethics sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation, Our brain is computing value at every fraction of a second. Everything that we look at, we form an implicit preference. Some of those make it into our awareness; some of them remain at the level of our unconscious, but ... what our brain is for, what our brain has evolved for, is to find what is of value in our environment.
Think of what happens when you put a new food into your mouth. You don’t have to decide if it’s disgusting. You just know. You don’t have to decide if a landscape is beautiful. You just know.
Moral judgments are like that. They are rapid intuitive decisions and involve the emotion-processing parts of the brain. Most of us make snap moral judgments about what feels fair or not, or what feels good or not. We start doing this when we are babies, before we have language. And even as adults, we often can’t explain to ourselves why something feels wrong.
In other words, reasoning comes later and is often guided by the emotions that preceded it. Or as Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia memorably wrote, The emotions are, in fact, in charge of the temple of morality, and ... moral reasoning is really just a servant masquerading as a high priest.
The question then becomes: What shapes moral emotions in the first place? The answer has long been evolution, but in recent years there’s an increasing appreciation that evolution isn’t just about competition. It’s also about cooperation within groups. Like bees, humans have long lived or died based on their ability to divide labor, help each other and stand together in the face of common threats. Many of our moral emotions and intuitions reflect that history. We don’t just care about our individual rights, or even the rights of other individuals. We also care about loyalty, respect, traditions, religions. We are all the descendents of successful cooperators.
The first nice thing about this evolutionary approach to morality is that it emphasizes the social nature of moral intuition. People are not discrete units coolly formulating moral arguments. They link themselves together into communities and networks of mutual influence.
The second nice thing is that it entails a warmer view of human nature. Evolution is always about competition, but for humans, as Darwin speculated, competition among groups has turned us into pretty cooperative, empathetic and altruistic creatures at least within our families, groups and sometimes nations.
The third nice thing is that it explains the haphazard way most of us lead our lives without destroying dignity and choice. Moral intuitions have primacy, Haidt argues, but they are not dictators. There are times, often the most important moments in our lives, when in fact we do use reason to override moral intuitions, and often those reasons along with new intuitions come from our friends.
The rise and now dominance of this emotional approach to morality is an epochal change. It challenges all sorts of traditions. It challenges the bookish way philosophy is conceived by most people. It challenges the Talmudic tradition, with its hyper-rational scrutiny of texts. It challenges the new atheists, who see themselves involved in a war of reason against faith and who have an unwarranted faith in the power of pure reason and in the purity of their own reasoning.
Finally, it should also challenge the very scientists who study morality. They’re good at explaining how people make judgments about harm and fairness, but they still struggle to explain the feelings of awe, transcendence, patriotism, joy and self-sacrifice, which are not ancillary to most people’s moral experiences, but central. The evolutionary approach also leads many scientists to neglect the concept of individual responsibility and makes it hard for them to appreciate that most people struggle toward goodness, not as a means, but as an end in itself.

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I think that last sentence is particularly interesting and it represents an example of materialistic scientists taking a subjective view on what makes us the way we are.

I'm not claiming that my approach to theology is similar to science. It is subjective but, but I will also say that what often passes for sceintific theory, such as Dawkins and his case for non-theistic evolution and memes, is subjective in that he has taken his world view and then created pseudo-scientific theory to fit that world view.

I actually think we are in agreement Percy. I do not confuse my faith and my interest in science. The only thing that I'll repeat in that regard is that I don't find them in opposition to each other, and personally I find them complimentary. I would agree that is a subjective view as well. Once again though, because a view is subjective does not mean that it's wrong.Edited by GDR, : sp

Why then in the book store is "The Selfish Gene" sold in the science section? And what evidence would that be?

Well I contend that there is knowledge that is true for everyone that can be reached subjectively, the only problem is that we won't know who has it, or even who has a part of it, or even if everyone is wrong.As far as the last statement is concerned I agree about "sceintifically established" theory. It's those theories out there that are established based on a completely subjective view of things that are in fact philosophical or theological that get passed off as science that I have an issue with.

A "meme" is as good an example as any.

Just to add to what I said. When I say that I find science and my faith complimentary I'll explain by giving a couple of examples. Christianity suggests that time had a beginning. That is consistent with modern science. I find that the "uncertainty principle is consistent with the Christian idea of free will. Does it prove anything? No, I just find it interesting.

You know that, I know that and so I imagine does every else on this forum. The fact still remains that Dawkins is considered as a writer of science, and when he goes off into areas that are meant to promote a materialistic view of the world in books that also does contain scientific facts, the lines get very blurred. In my view it is in the same category as trying to support a 6000 year old world by mixing in some legitimate science with untestable subjective theory.

I have no question that natural selection(which I assume you would agree that this is an example of, remembering that I have no biological background), happens.
The questions then to be asked are:1/ Did evolution begin through a completely natural process or was there an external designer.2/ Once biological life was a fact, (and assuming there was a designer),
(a)was the design complete with evolution continuing with no interference,
(b)did evoultion continue with some interference at various stages in the process,
(c)or was the designer involved at every point in the process.Obviously to question 1 my answer is that I believe there was an external designer.To question 2, I believe that the answer is option (b). However, having said that I could live with any of the three possibilities.

Here is a Dawkin's quote:

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Another objection is that we don't know what memes are made of, or where they reside. Memes have not yet found their Watson and Crick, they even lack their Mendel. Whereas genes are to be found in precise locations on chromosomes, memes presumably exist in brains, and we even have less chance of seeing one than of seeing a gene (though the neurobiologist Juan Delius has pictured his conjecture of what a meme might look like).

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and this from wiki

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A meme (pronounced /mim/ - rhyming with "cream"), is a postulated unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices that gets transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. The etymology of the term relates to the Greek word mimema for "something imitated".[1]. Supporters of the concept of memes believe that they act as cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate and respond to selective pressures.[2] Memeticists have not definitively empirically proven the existence of discrete memes or their proposed mechanism as they do not form part of the consensus of mainstream social sciences. Meme theory therefore lacks the same degree of influence granted to its counterpart and inspiration, genetics.

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Richard Dawkins first introduced the word in The Selfish Gene (1976) to discuss evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. He gave as examples melodies, catch-phrases, and beliefs (notably religious belief), clothing/fashion, and the technology of building arches.[3]

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Meme-theorists contend that memes evolve by natural selection (in a manner similar to that of biological evolution) through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance influencing an individual entity's reproductive success. Memes spread through the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. Theorists point out that memes which replicate the most effectively spread best, and some memes may replicate effectively even when they prove detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.[4]

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A field of study called memetics arose in the 1990s to explore the concepts and transmission of memes in terms of an evolutionary model. Criticism from a variety of fronts has challenged the notion that scholarship can examine memes empirically. Some commentators question the idea that one can meaningfully categorize culture in terms of discrete units.

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Memes

Beats me. I do know that science seems to consider the passage of time something of an illusion for us, and is the way we experience change. Some theories speculate about other dimensions of time. Science talks about the world as being open and infinite. The point being is that we don't know much about time and so I suggest that one possibility, (which I accept) is that God is infinite, or that He just always was.