The Truth About Evolution and Religion

Edited by AdminSlev, : No reason given.

Evolutionary biology concerns only the evolution of the human body, not the soul. Also, natural selection only explains the adaptation of organisms to its environment, not common descent.It is true that biology textbooks don't mention the human soul. However, science textbooks also don't mention free will and the conscious knowledge of human beings. It is understood that human rationality, the soul, God, and intelligent design are not scientific concepts and don't belong in a biology textbook.While many writers, even science writers, think natural selection explains the increase in the complexity of life as it evolved from single-celled organisms to chimps, no professional biologist says such a thing. In my opinion, the so-called debate or "controversy" about evolution is pseudo-science and prevents people from believing in the Bible and the Koran.

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David Roemer

The human soul is not a poorly defined concept at all. What can't be defined is free will and the conscious knowledge of human beings. This is why humans are indefinabilities that become conscious of their own existence or embodied spirits. The human soul is a metaphysical principle that makes humans equal to one another and the body is a correlative principle that makes humans different from one another. The following is a quote from Stephen Jay Gould admitting that evolution only applies to the bodies of humans, not their souls:Catholics could believe whatever science determined about the evolution of the human body, so long as they accepted that, at some time of his choosing, God had infused the soul into such a creature. I also knew that I had no problem with this statement, for whatever my private beliefs about souls, science cannot touch such a subject and therefore cannot be threatened by any theological position on such a legitimately and intrinsically religious issue. (Stephen Jay Gould, Nonoverlapping Magisteria, Natural History, March 1997, 13th paragraph)

Science is only one method of inquiry and is based on sense knowledge. Metaphysics is based on logic and knowledge gained from our transcendence (e.g., humans are responsible for their actions). In both science and metaphysics you can see the truth of what you know. In revealed religion, you can't see the truth of it. You know it is true because God is telling you (e.g., there is life after death).

Metaphysics is the study of being as being (being in the abstract). Metaphysics doesn't address all questions (What is knowledge? What is free will?). It explains why beings change, why beings are finite, and why beings are members of a class or category of being.When a being changes in time, there is a contradiction. It is the same and is yet different. How can this be made intelligible? Ans.: A being is a metaphysical composition of substance and accidence. Likewise, a finite being is composed of essence and existence. A being that is a member of a class is composed of form and matter. For humans, the form is called the soul and the matter is called the body.

There is no evidence, as you say. Evidence is the basis of scientific knowledge. There is no evidence that we dream when we sleep. We know we dream because we can make ourselves the subject of our own knowledge. This is called transcendence.

I am interested in explaining biology, especially evolutionary biology. To understand biology, you need to understand metaphysics and understand why biology only studies the bodies of humans. Most American biologists don't understand the biology of humans because if you ask them about the human soul they will give an irrational and misinformed answer. American biologists speak of dualism, monism, determinism, and materialism without knowing what they are talking about.

If you were a biology teacher and a student asked you if animals had free will, what would you say? This is a multiple choice question:
1) I don't know.
2) Free will is an illusion.
3) Ask your philosophy teacher.
4) Biology only studies the bodies of humans, not their souls.

Memory has to do with past and future. But the past and future are mental beings. Past and future only exist when a real being is thinking about the past and future. What are mental beings? Do mental beings have mass? Do mental beings take up space?

I agree that the choice is between 2) and 4). Your remarks are similar to Stephen Jay Gould's. You are talking out of both sides of your mouth. Gould spoke about his "private ideas" and you distinguish between what you say to children and what you think. I have no such conflict. I say what I think.People who say free will is an illusion live their lives as if they have free will. They apologize when they hurt someone, they feel guilty, and they promise not to do it again.

I want to discuss my fax to the following organizations. So far, there has been no response from any of the objects of my criticism:Emailed and faxed to:
Discovery Institute
208 Columbia Street
Seattle, WA 981042776 South Arlington Mill Drive, #813
Arlington, VA 22206Attn: Steven Buri, Howard Ahmanson, Tom Alberg, Charles Barbo, Christopher Bayley, Bruce Chapman, Robert Cihak, Skip Gilliland, Slade Gorton, Richard Greiling, Patricia Herbold, Bob Kelly, Bryan Mistele, Byron Nutley, James Spady, Michael Vaska, and Raymond WaldmannNational Center for Science Education
420 40th Street Suite 2
Oakland, CA 94609-2688Attn: Kevin Padian, Elizabeth Stage, Jack Friedman, Robert West, Brian Alters, John Cole, Barbara Forrest, Martha Heil, Duane Jeffery, Michael McIlwrath, Andrew Petto, Frank Sonleitner, Lorne Trottier, Bernard Winograd, and Eugenie ScottOn November 24, 2009, I attended an event honoring Charles Darwin that included a question and answer period with Gerald M. Edelman, Paul Ekman, and Terrence Deacon. The program can be see at
150 Years of the Origin of Species - THIRTEEN ForumAfter telling the panel of experts I made a video on YouTube titled The Truth About Evolution and Religion at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKaF8vX6HXQ
I said: 1) Evolution applies only to the bodies of humans, not their souls. 2) Natural selection only explains the adaptation of organisms to their environment, not the increase in the complexity of organisms as they evolved from bacteria to mammals (common descent).The panel did not respond to the first point. The panel’s answer to the second point gave the many school children in the audience and web conferences the impression that natural selection was indeed a scientific explanation for adaptation and common decent. My question is 2 hours, 21 minutes, and 43 seconds into the video.Six minutes before my question, a young woman in the audience pointed out that there was no scientific definition of consciousness, a word that the panel was bandying about. The panel avoiding commenting on this point and the implication that human beings are indefinabilities or embodied spirits. I discuss the mind-body problem in my review of The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins, at
http://www.dkroemer.com/page81/page81.html
Mr. Dawkins is another one overstates the applicability of natural selection.In my opinion, the panel’s responses were disingenuous and served to disseminate misinformation about evolutionary biology. This misinformation is harmful because it serves to dissuade children from believing in religion. I’m writing to the executives and members of the boards of the Discovery Institute and the National Center for Science Education because I feel these two organizations propagate the same kind of misinformation about evolutionary biology that the panel propagated.If you have any questions about my analysis of evolution and criticism of your organizations, don’t hesitate to call or write.Very truly yours,David RoemerEdited by dkroemer, : Deleted my phone number. My true name is on my website.

Semantics? Read my fax again. I accused Terrance Deacon (he was the only panel member to actually speak) of being dishonest and harming children. By the way, Professor Deacon began to discuss the matter with me but abruptly stopped and told me to stop copying him in my emails to the Design Institute and the National Center for Science Education.By not answering my statement that evolution does not apply to the human soul they created the impression in many children listening that the idea of the soul is so irrational that my point does not merit a reply.Terrance Deacon's response left the impression that natural selection did indeed explain common descent.

You don't have to make assumptions about what Terrance Deacon said. You can hear what he said from the link I gave you. Deacon and his like deceive not only children, but science writers. The following quote is from Christine Kenneally in her book The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language. Kenneally, Pinker and Bloom are linguists, not biologists. They think that natural selection explains the complexity of life:"But, continued Pinker and Bloom, complexity is not a problem for evolution. Consider the eye. The little organ is composed of many specialized parts, each delicately calibrated to perform its role in conjunction with the others. It includes the cornea,Even Darwin said that it was hard to image how the eye could have evolved.
And yet, he explained, it did evolve, and the only possible way is through natural selectionthe inestimable back-and-forth of random genetic mutation with small effectsOver the eons, those small changes accreted and eventually resulted in the eye as we know it." (pp. 59—60)Edited by dkroemer, : No reason given.

Are you saying that everyone understand that natural selection explains only adaptation? That natural selection does not explain the increase in the complexity of life as it evolved from bacteria to mammals?

I am basing my views on the following quote from mainstream biologists from Harvard and Berkeley:"Facilitated variation is not like orthogenesis, a theory championed by the eccentric American paleontologist Henry Osborn (1857—1935), which imbues the organism with an internal preset course of evolution, a program of variations unfolding over time. Natural selection remains a major part of the explanation of how organisms have evolved characters so well adapted to the environment." (The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin’s Dilemma, page 247)Gerhart and Kirschner are saying facilitated variation and natural selection explain only adaptation. They are not saying it explains the increase in the complexity of life. This is another quote from their award winning book:"By comparison, if we question how long it would take a high-speed computer to write randomly a specific Shakespearean sonnet, we are asking that all the letters of the words of the sonnet will come up simultaneously in the correct order. It is an impossible task, even if all the computers in the world today had been working from the time of the big bang to the present. Even to compose the phrase, To be or not to be, letter by letter, would take a typical computer millions of years." ( page 32)They modified their statement that a computer would take "millions of years." With facilitated variation and natural selection a computer could reproduce "to be or not to be" in a short time. However, they did not give the calculation for a full sonnet. I am suggesting that the reason they do not is that natural selection plus facilitated variation plus mutations obviously cannot explain the complexity of life.