Evolution is NOT science: A challenge

I think you are making a mistake. God was more excluded in the sense of Kant's dualism and the like. There is nature and there is the supernatural which has primacy over the natural. It was not excluded in the sense that there was no spiritual dimension to reality, rather it was said that generally statements about the spiritual dimension are valuejudgemets, and not statements of fact. So I would say that science followed the ideal to separate valuejudgements from statements of fact, but is not in denial of the spritiual dimension where values apply, or in denial that values, and that sort of thing in general, have relevance to the course of nature. It owed much of it's success to that discipline of separating statement of fact from valuejudgements. Later materialists, and especially evolutionists it seems, conflated natural and supernatural into one, which caused the ideological onslaught on traditional religions in general of all kinds of pseudoscience where the line between statement of fact and valuejudgement was very blurry. So not only is God excluded, but love and hate, valuejudgements, are also excluded from science.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

But your point has been refuted. It is not true that the acceptance of evolution by Christianists is not problematical in general according to those Christians. I rather think I've convincingly shown, that creation is a distinct principle from evolution, but legitimate within science, and that evolutionists deny and or ignore creation, based on the atheism, materialism associated to evolution theory, and not on any evidence.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

The original point was that evolution was a theory and not a religion. You have convinced no one otherwise.And it's not problematic to me, I actually think it makes more sense if evolution happened! Lots of people seem to agree. You can think whatever you want; nobody else seems to agree. Also, you don't seem to be listening to what we say.Arguing with me while I'm looking up Rammstein guitar tabs is a grave mistake. I suggest you don't make it again or you will pay handsomely.

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Wanna feel God? Step onto the wrestling mat and you'd be crazy to deny the uplifting spirit. http://www.BadPreacher.5u.com (incomplete, but look anyway!)

This is exactly why theistic evolutionists were brought up. They are not influenced by atheism or materialism. They accept the TOE (Theory of Evolution) to be true because of the evidence that they have seen supporting it.I'll shut up now and let Born2Preach do his thing.

I think you'll find that Materialism preceeds evolution, and that this MATERIAL EVIDENCE is what gives them their confidence.

Dear Syamsu,Perhaps you should also try your own challenge. As far as your example of a falling rock goes it fails miserably, there are already a host of material factors affecting which way it bounces. There is the shape of the rock, the exact way in which it tumbles as it falls, how that tumbling is affected by things such as air resistance and wind currents, the shape of the ground on to which it is being dropped and probably a host of others I can't think of. The mathematics required to work out what the effect of all these factors would be is frankly beyond me and probably beyond anyone without a highly sophisticated supercomputer, that doesn't mean that they aren't determing the final trajectory of the stone however.If you think you spelled it out then I fear you used the cyrillic alphabet to do so. But even so I'll give it a try.When I go for my morning tea break I might decide to have a bacon roll on the other hand I may not. At the moment it is impossible to determine the outcome of my decision. I'll let you know how it turns out later.TTFN,WK

It turned out that I decided to have a bacon roll, but I couldn't tell you why, spooky eh?TTFN,WK

I have that example from someone else who said that the outcome was an uncertainty according to current science, and not very complex so that science can't calculate the outcome.Anyway... who are you? You decided to have a bacon role is it. Are you a material being? If that is so, then does a rock also decide to go left or right when it bounces?regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Lol...this has to be the most ridiculous challenge I've ever heard of .If something happens...then, in retrospect, it clearly could not happen another way. For whatever reason, the outcome was produced/chosen. Something was weighing in its favor.At any rate, since this is getting completely ridiculous and B2P asked all the atheists (which I assume means me as well, though I'm agnostic) to stand down for the time being, I am going to be silent until he says otherwise. May you have fun presenting others with your ridiculous arguments, scenerios, and challenges.

What is this supposed to mean? Do you mean that the resolution of the motion and the effects of the shapes are not too complex to be calculated but that there is something else which leaves us uncertain as to the result? Its a fairly big assertion and you provide nothing to back it up. Or are you simply agreeing with me that while the motion could in theory be calculated it is doubtful we could do so successfully with our current understanding of things.If it is a question of the complexity of the system then you simply seem to be arguing from ignorance and using a 'god of the gaps' type argument to say that the creation/ choice event is hidden in the portion of the phenomenon that we cannot as yet resolve. Fair question. I certainly have a material component but it is not impossible that I also have some intangible spiritual component. I don't have any evidence that this is so but I have no reason other than parsimony to exclude it as a possibility. Assuming that I do have such a spiritual element and that it in some way underlies or influences my thought process. I would suggest that your rock has no such spiritual element which can influence it, and that it is incapable of choosing anything as its trajectory is solely determined by a variety of physical factors.Again I ask you, are you saying that creation is simply a question of the existence of free will and that materialism (not evolution) naturally leads us to a conclusion that there is no free will? I have some sympathy with that view, in a large part the question is really 'what governs the behaviour of sub-atomic paricles?'. What, if anything, causes a particular particle to decay at a particular time? From a materialist viewpoint it could be seen to folow that all of our so called choices are simply the result of highly complex but ultimately deterministic processes. Even the stochastic nature of events may be deterministic if we have a sufficient understanding of the behaviour of every single component. Chaos theory states that minute variations in initial conditions can lead to large sacele differences in outcomes.The question of whether the universe is deterministic or not is a big one, but isn't by any means relevant to the creation Vs. evolution debate or even the dualist Vs. strict materialist debate. The source of whatever true randomness exists in the universe, if any, is unknown, labelling it 'creation' simply confuses the normal understanding of that term in the long standing EvC debate and provides no argument in favour of religion simply an argument in favour of our knowledge being insufficient to answer the question.TTFN,WKP.S. Are you ever coming back to the natural selection thread?P.P.S. In order not to get in the way of the dialogue between you and B2P would you be interested in discussing the question of 'creation as free will' in a seperate thread?This message has been edited by Wounded King, 07-23-2004 07:28 AMThis message has been edited by Wounded King, 07-23-2004 07:31 AM

I don't know what you're talking about, uncertainty is an integral part of current science, and not some new, and as of yet unknown finding. No I'm not talking about something being too complex to calculate, just about it being calculated as being an uncertainty.Science says it is uncertain, your suggestions that it isn't aren't accepted science theories, it's just a notion you have. Science may be wrong about there being uncertainty, but it is what they say. Personally I just don't think the theory that every speck of dust is in a place as was predetermined at the start of the universe has any credibility, that is my notion of it.I'm asking you to identify who or what the owner of the choice is, to the highest degree of precision possible. Brain and so on... Let's see who this you is you're talking about and if this you made a decision or if there was actually no decision possible.Why are you arguing that there is no choice? If you turn your own example into an event where there is no other possible outcome then you fail the test. You already turned my example into that, eventhough I have the word of someone who says that SCIENCE says it's uncertain. You are just arguing against the facts of science as far as I know, with your notion it may all be predetermined.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Well you fail the test.Glordag:
"in retrospect, it clearly could not happen another way."The outcome in your example was predetermined by some "weight" favoring one particular outcome and it couldn't happen another way.Very strange but true, evolutionists generally can't describe events going one way or another.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Oh well, as long as you have someone's word on it that thats what SCIENCE says, not just wussey old science, it must be true.Come on Syamsu, even for you this level of argumentation is astonishingly lame. An argument from some totally anonymous authority.Please give us something to show what your understanding of the place of 'uncertainty' in science is. I gave two possibilities and you plumped for a vague non-description. So you are claiming that the trajectory of a dropped stone isn't determined by its various physical properties, the properties of the surface it impacts on and its motion, are you familiar with mechanics? Surely you remember Newton's laws of motion that you were so keen on having as fundamental to all science and which are wholly deterministic. So what does make the stone go one way or another? If your answer is 'creation' I may just have to scream. I'm not arguing that, I'm just framing a couple of interesting question fairly central to this debate. I'm saying that some materialist certainly do ascribe to the determinist philosophy you mention but that it isn't a neccessary result of materialism and that similarly many religions espouse a belief in fore-ordination which suggests that events are pre-determined, although many try to have their cake and eat it by saying that although events are predetermined people still have free will, they just choose to do the things which were predetermined.As far as I am concerned I am a discrete individual and I certainly don't feel that my behaviour is pre-determined. I can't dissect my mental processes to the degree neccessary to see if I can identify an origin for my choices. I don't know how much more precise you think I can be, I certainly can't identify some physical area of my brain which is responsible for the choice. And even if certain parts of my brain should show activity as I make choices that does not show that some process within those areas is reponsible for the origination of the idea.TTFN,WKP.S. Would you be interested in moving this discussion to the thread I am trying to get established as 'Creation Vs. Evolution = Free will Vs Determination'? It might help keep this thread on topic a bit more and clear some of the atheists out of the way so you and B2P can have a more one on one debate.

Strange yet untrue. Once more you reveal your unfamiliarity with evolutionary science. Evolutionary scientists are often concerned with possible differing outcomes, arguably that is what happens in every instance of speciation, especially sympatric.Once something has happened you can try and find out what may have influenced or caused it to happen, and it is often possible to speculate on other possible outcomes if things had happened slightly differently. If something has not yet happened then usually more than one possible outcome is hypothesised.Arguably the entire basis of all science is based on differing outcomes, that is what experimentation is about after all.TTFN,WK

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Very strange but true, evolutionists generally can't describe events going one way or another.

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Although you do qualify your statement with "generally", there are occasions where the benefit of a new allele is very apparant. In the case of a new hemoglobin allele that does not have the side effects of sickle cell anemia, but does offer resistance, the new allele is expected to replace the old allele. In fact, by using calculations on relative risks, they propose that the new allele will replace the old in 50 generations. Note: the C allele is the new allele and the S allele is sickle cell. In a way, this allele replacement is unstoppable given the ability of natural selection to shift allele distributions. I would suspect that this allele will also spread to areas without endemic malaria since this will be a neutral mutation in those areas. However, as natural selection predicts, the highest concentration of this allele will be in areas of endemic malarial disease.