They want to forget Darwin ... [help]

[Cat]

lurk & pds: to check the possible interpretations, we would need to know ancient hebrew, and see if those associations (menace of imminent death or spiritual death) could have been intended. However, just to stay controversial, it sounds like clutching at straws. If someone tells you "if you touch the wiring you will surely die" do you really think "maybe I'll die in a hundred years"? Or are you telling me the bible uses deceptive, obfuscating and deliberately obscure language? Isn't the bible the direct word of god which is truth? So that if god says "you'll die" you'll die? When god said "let there be light", there was light. Light didn't creep out of some hole reluctantly to obey gods command against its own wishes, it promptly sprang to attention and ran to him with a spring in its step! When god says "clean up your room", you're not going to linger around saying "yeah,right, I'll clean up later maybe ...", do you? While there sure is poetical language in the bible which isn't to be taken literally, god saying "you'll die" isn't really very poetic ... it's not like he said "when your finger will bring the forbidden fruit of knowledge to your lips, know that with your first bite a dark future will shape in you very body and soul". We could debate that, but "you'll die" doesn't really leave room for anything else that clutching at straws. Theologists, however, are black belt straw clutchers...

EDIT: actually the King James version says:

but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die

. we can debate "day" of course, for isn't man's life only like a brief day in the face of eternity? ... and we know from Genesis that the world was created in 6 days, so "day" should be interesting to debate.

EDIT: in truth I say to you, most versions include "in the day", "the very day", "the moment", "when" (i.e. "as soon as", not "if"), "If you eat any fruit from that tree, you will die before the day is over!", "and of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou dost not eat of it, for in the day of thine eating of it -- dying thou dost die" (quoted from "Young's Literal Translation").

 

[pds]

When god says "clean up your room", you're not going to linger around saying "yeah,right, I'll clean up later maybe ...", do you? While there sure is poetical language in the bible which isn't to be taken literally, god saying "you'll die" isn't really very poetic ... it's not like he said "when your finger will bring the forbidden fruit of knowledge to your lips, know that with your first bite a dark future will shape in you very body and soul". We could debate that, but "you'll die" doesn't really leave room for anything else tha[n] clutching at straws. Theologists, however, are black belt straw clutchers...

Yes, "in that (very)day..., thou shalt surely die" means that if they ate, in that moment they did die. Since they did not immediately expire, then their death must be non-physical.

Yes, a little ancient Hebrew would be helpful to find context, but the context can also be found in the wholeness of the story. Remember, it is not a contemporary story, not Adam's first person account, but an alegorical myth. There was no "tree of life" in the middle of the garden, it is a biblical symbol. There was no "tree of knowledge of good and evil" either. It too is a biblical symbol. Only problem is the latter is only mentioned in connection to the Eden story. But the former is mentioned several times. In Proverbs desire fulfilled is a tree of life. In Revelation it is the birthright of the faithful. In Christian tradition it is Jesus himself.

Jesus is the completed tree of life, Adam (whom Jesus replaces) was longing to become that tree (to be a good son of god) but something about the companion tree tripped him up.

Now Gia, don't get bent out of shape... It was Adam's fault, not his companion's - or at least they are equally at fault...

 

[Giaguara]

Maybe the tree was something .. what Socrates talked about. That cave. When you get out of there, you can see the light, you can see .. everything. The people in the cave keep talking about the shadows, as that is all they know.
Considering religion mainly as an early governing system, that would make sense. The tree of knowledge - for a governor etc it is harder when the people know too much. So it'll be a sin ..

 

[brianleahy]

The "Contemporary English Version" is most emphatic of all:

except the one that has the power to let you know the difference between right and wrong. If you eat any fruit from that tree, you will die before the day is over!"

As allegory, myth or metaphor Genesis works fine, though that is a slippery slope that many creationists fear. If the tree isn't real metaphorical, what about the garden? What about Adam and Eve themselves?

If the purpose of the story is simply to illustrate humans' tendency to succumb to temptation despite of the certainty of repercussions, and it's not an actual description of the origins of the human race, then why bother searching for scientific support for the story? Why worry when the geologic record shows that humans are latecomers, and that a vast array of other life forms lived and died before the first humans appeared? There's no logical conflict when history (or pre-history) disagrees with a metphor.

Even so, the story conflicts with itself; God says, in effect, that the fruit is poisonous, yet Adam and Eve do not die upon eating it. So in response, some argue in effect that "it depends on what you mean by 'die'"? Isn't this exactly the sort of semantic spin-doctoring that Bill Clinton was accused of?

We could say that God lied to Adam, in an effort to scare him into steering clear of that fruit. But that opens a big messy can of worms. If God ever lies to mankind about things, then the whole notion of "the gospel truth" goes out the window. Besides, it seems a little beneath Him. If He wants to prevent humans from doing something, He has many more effective - and more dignified - ways of doing so.

 

[Cat]

Ok, if you take the bible as metaforical account, then I completely agree that it is an important book, ethically very valuable etc. western tradition and all that. But as to its literal truth, on which so much depends for the faithful, it is like the story of Little Red Riding Hood. It teaches us somthing, it amuses us, entertains us thrills us, but it is not a factual account. Otherwise we might as well believe Odin to ride around on an eight legged horse and Zeus changing shapes to lie with our wives and all that. IIRC Thomas Hobbes already said "of the three great monotheistical religions _at least_ two are wrong". I'm taking bets ...

 

[pds]

With caveat of more to come and a short window of time, I think the Bible is many things. Some of it is metaphor, some literature, some history and some politics. And behind it is truth. I said once before that things are not true because they are in the Bible but in the Bible because they are true. Little Red Riding Hood is not in the Bible, but many stories and lessons from Literature are and many stories that are'nt have roots there.

In the Eden story it is clearly the first, and whether or not they find the place seems to me to be a waste of time. (In the UAE they have a tree in the middle of the desert that they call Adam's tree of life...)

Cat, I am looking forward to getting the Golden Bough when I visit the states this summer. There is something to be said though for the survival of the fittest and seems that Zeus, Apollo and Odin were'nt the fittest....

Can I place a bet that all three are right until they get to the "there are no other" parts, then all three are wrong. Events can be described by different people from different viewing points differently without being _wrong_. The trick is to get beyond viewing points to take a broad point of view...

 

[Cat]

Cat, I am looking forward to getting the Golden Bough when I visit the states this summer.

I think you will like it. It can give many insights into religions an their development over time.

There is something to be said though for the survival of the fittest and seems that Zeus, Apollo and Odin were'nt the fittest....

Evolutionary theology?

Can I place a bet that all three are right until they get to the "there are no other" parts, then all three are wrong.

That would be a very good bet.

 

[pds]

umm... evolutionary theology

What's that buzzword... intelligent design. The end point of evolution was contained at the beginning, all part of the plan. I think of religion in that way, the path to the realization of man's potential. So, no wonder that there is *development over time*.

The how and the why, both objects of study and discovery...

 

[MDLarson]

Well, I'm back from my short hiatus!

Indeed, this site is quite a find; it links to a virtual encyclopedia of rebuttals to many creationist arguments ( http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/index.html ) including the question of mutations adding information:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB102.html

I submitted the following question to AIG, as I am at a loss to this one...

"I am a literal 6-day Creationist and rely on AIG for my scientific defense. I have been involved in a Creation / evolution discussion (http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43209) and have talked at length about genetic mutations. One person posted, in response to my "no-new-information mutation" argument the following link: (http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB102.html).

I don't have the knowledge or resources to tackle the problem posed myself, that is why I am submitting the apparent problem to the capable AIG scientists. Please help!"

All I have at this point are a few references to scientific studies that I don't really have access to.

A favorite of many creationists I have known - and which MD has mentioned - is the notion that life arising from lifelessness seems incredibly unlikely.

That's not an argument at all.

First: that something seems unlikely to someone is not an argument, but simply a matter of psychology. Things that I do not understand tend to seem unlikely to me, however my opinion of them does not make them true or untrue.

Are not even scientists prone to this way of thinking, or is the scientist 100% objective? (Answer is NO!)

Second: If creationist would actually use this as if it were some kind of argument, it can very easily be turned against them, as the notion that everything was created by a god is not more or less likely in principle than the notion of "life arising from lifelessness".

The Creationist has a distinct advantage; life (as we know it) had a catalyst. God caused life to originate. The sidenote that God created the universe from 'nothingness' is irrelevant when you have an all-powerful creator God. The evolutionist can at best shrug the shoulders and guess, hoping that somehow aliens will tell us how it happened or we'll figure it out (lets give ourselves a million years or so and hope we stumble over the solution). This is the Creationist Cop-out (can I coin that phrase?) of supernaturability. Your stance on supernaturality immediately and definitively puts you on the evolutionist or Creationist side of things. Case closed.

Third: life arising from lifelessness is not unlikely at all. The basic presupposition for life is the presence of a self-replicating structure. Given such a structure, which can easily arise by chance, enough basic materials and a few million years will show a net increase of the number and complexity of such structure.
...

What are the chances? C'mon, give me some numbers. Sir Fred Hoyle actually did the math, but what does he know? It's just his personal opinion...

In a famous experiment Miller showed that simply mixing together some common chemical elements that abounded in the primeval seas of the earth he could obtain the basic building blocks of life. You CAN do this at home (god not included). Occam's razor tells us what to do with superfluous hypotheses ...

"While no ribozyme in nature has yet been found that can replicate itself, ribozymes have been synthesized in the laboratory that can catalyze the assembly of short oligonucleotides into exact complements of themselves." (italics are mine)

"In the years since Miller's work, many variants of his procedure have been tried. Virtually all the small molecules that are associated with life have been formed" (again, italics are mine)

Let me get this right... Basically Miller, a "graduate student in biochemistry", who had a guess of what the early atmosphere was like, could only replicate molecules "associated with life"? This is a guy (let's call him an intelligent designer for fun) after all his years of advanced study, after trying to get the conditions just right, couldn't even produce simple life?!?! And you have the gall to dismiss my questions regarding life arising from lifenesses as "not even an argument?" I think it is the evolutionist grasping at straws when every instance of scientific evidence suggests things are winding down, not gearing up. You can certainly be reasonable enough to see why I am skeptical.

Miller's experiment proves that it takes a lot of smarts to fake evolution.

(Folks, I do not intend to sound irrational, I am just irritated when some people simply dismiss my skepticism out-of-hand, as Cat has done.)

 

[brianleahy]

At some point, we all must shrug our shoulders. While science is coming ever closer to describing the conditions that existed in the micro-seconds after the Big Bang, few believe we can ever hope to fully understand WHY the Big Bang occurred, apart from pure speculation.

Yet I feel that in a fundamental way, creationism is no different in this regard. As I alluded to in my Blog, inserting God as a creative force might account for the existence of the universe, but what accounts for the existence of God? Surely, the creator of the universe is himself an entity far too complex and purposeful to have arisen by accident.

This is where the religious sometimes shrug their shoulders. Some will counter with the suggestion that God "has always existed," but this makes the entire equation somewhat self defeating: if the universe came from God, and God always existed, then what explanatory value does the story have? Why not simply say that the universe has always existed, and save ourselves a step?

True, the Bible says that God created the universe, but that's contrary to our purpose here: we're looking for evidence in the universe that supports the Bible, not vice versa.

And it's true; evolutionists have never reproduced the evolution of life from lifeless chemicals. Similarly, creationists have never conjured life from the clay (nor pursuaded God to repeat this feat for a TV crew.) The day anyone succeeds in either endavor, it'll surely make headlines....

 

[Cat]

Are not even scientists prone to this way of thinking, or is the scientist 100% objective?

Scientist are extremely prone to this kind of thing. Their great advantege over followers of blind faith is that they are aware of their cognitive flaws and biases and try to compensate for them through systematical doubt and methodological skepticism. You do not make assumptions until you are forced to. The faithfull assume a god to exists and stop looking for explanations.

The esistance of a god is no more no less unlikely than the existence of an eternal universe capable of generating life without any supernatural intervenience.

What are the chances? C'mon, give me some numbers.

Well, let's assume that the odds of life being generated on a certain planet are very low, say 1/googol (googol is 10^100 IIRC). To the best of our knowledge the universe has existed now for billions of years and there is a LOT of matter flying around in it. There are billions of stars and billions of planets just in our very own galaxy, which is one of billions. Even if the odds are extremely low, nevertheless there is the possibility that life arises from lifelessness in all that time and space. The results obtaned by Miller are a very simple and very crude and primitive proof of concept. IF we are capable of roughly obtaining the basic building blocks of life in a guided experiment, nature, which has had the time and space to make billions of experiments is very likely to have obtained the same.

You can say that it is unlikely, but if there is even the slightest chanche, sooner or later it will arise. Shuffle a deck of cards. What are the oods that the first four cards that you draw are the four aces? very very low, but the possibility exists. Now let all people on earth shuffle their decks and try a hundred times a day. What are the odds of getting that draw in a year? Suddenly al lot higher. Given enough trials any combination will arise. Each single trial has the same low odds, but given anough trials, statistics tells us to expect that a certain combination will show up.

 

[MDLarson]

Scientist are extremely prone to this kind of thing. Their great advantege over followers of blind faith is that they are aware of their cognitive flaws and biases and try to compensate for them through systematical doubt and methodological skepticism. You do not make assumptions until you are forced to. The faithfull assume a god to exists and stop looking for explanations.

So what am I doing? I am attempting to reconcile science with my faith, and have done at least an OK job of it. I don't have answers to a couple of issues, and I admit it, but I don't think I quite fit into your blind faith stereotype.

Well, let's assume that the odds of life being generated on a certain planet are very low, say 1/googol (googol is 10^100 IIRC). To the best of our knowledge the universe has existed now for billions of years and there is a LOT of matter flying around in it.

Wait a second, I thought people believed in billions of years because the insane odds dictated it, not the other way around...

There are billions of stars and billions of planets just in our very own galaxy, which is one of billions. Even if the odds are extremely low, nevertheless there is the possibility that life arises from lifelessness in all that time and space. The results obtaned by Miller are a very simple and very crude and primitive proof of concept. IF we are capable of roughly obtaining the basic building blocks of life in a guided experiment, nature, which has had the time and space to make billions of experiments is very likely to have obtained the same.

Actually, the more we look around our big beautiful universe, the more unique Earth looks. Just keep looking though...

You can say that it is unlikely, but if there is even the slightest chanche, sooner or later it will arise. Shuffle a deck of cards. What are the oods that the first four cards that you draw are the four aces? very very low, but the possibility exists. Now let all people on earth shuffle their decks and try a hundred times a day. What are the odds of getting that draw in a year? Suddenly al lot higher. Given enough trials any combination will arise. Each single trial has the same low odds, but given anough trials, statistics tells us to expect that a certain combination will show up.

You have great faith.

 

[Giaguara]

The Creationist has a distinct advantage; life (as we know it) had a catalyst. God caused life to originate. The sidenote that God created the universe from 'nothingness' is irrelevant when you have an all-powerful creator God. The evolutionist can at best shrug the shoulders and guess, hoping that somehow aliens will tell us how it happened or we'll figure it out (lets give ourselves a million years or so and hope we stumble over the solution). This is the Creationist Cop-out (can I coin that phrase?) of supernaturability. Your stance on supernaturality immediately and definitively puts you on the evolutionist or Creationist side of things. Case closed.
What are the chances? C'mon, give me some numbers. Sir Fred Hoyle actually did the math, but what does he know? It's just his personal opinion...
"While no ribozyme in nature has yet been found that can replicate itself, ribozymes have been synthesized in the laboratory that can catalyze the assembly of short oligonucleotides into exact complements of themselves." (italics are mine)

"In the years since Miller's work, many variants of his procedure have been tried. Virtually all the small molecules that are associated with life have been formed" (again, italics are mine)

The classical religious explanation "god created everything" for some reason has never really appealed to me. I remember my mum being overly religious, bringing me to the sunday schools etc when I was small, and I remember thinking that it all sounded just like a fairytale that the adults wanted us to believe in. It didn't make much sense to me when I was 3, and it hasn't changed much since.

God created .. talking about the possibility, which is the possibility there is a god / gods? (Or taking of say 10 major religions, the change that what you believe is right? It should be about 1/10, assuming one of them is right.) I find it interesting that most religions that existed before jewism and christianity gave their god female attributes. So their god created the world (in their stories). The change in the "gods" seems to happen on the same time the main cultures switches from matriarchal to patriarchal. Men wanted to create something, seen the possibility of creating more humans was limited to women, so they wanted their god(s)?

Millers work .. it takes time, right? Rome wasn't built in a day, and most people don't interpret the god creating the world story litterally, it _really_ having happened in 6 man days. If it took years, or thousands of years, how could it be possible to repeat what Miller is trying, in a few years, and with every possible single variant? He'll need thousands of years.

 

[pds]

And it's true; evolutionists have never reproduced the evolution of life from lifeless chemicals. Similarly, creationists have never conjured life from the clay (nor pursuaded God to repeat this feat for a TV crew.) The day anyone succeeds in either endavor, it'll surely make headlines....

Well, isn't this just what Miller did? Isn't life like an interconnected force-field ("use the force Luke") and Miller's folding created a "radio" that was capable of receiving the "signal of life." No wonder then that use of other chemical compounds don't work, they can't tune in to the "life frequency."

That is to say Miller's experiment did include God, since there is no place that he doesn't "exist."

BTW, not all faith is blind, many of us believe due to direct personal encounter with the subject of our faith. Cat once said that he does not "require God," but that does not exclude the circumstance where God "requires" Cat. God is not the object of faith (I have faith _in_ God), but the subject of it.

 

[brianleahy]

Well, isn't this just what Miller did?

That's an interesting perspective; trying to recreate molecular evolution IS equivalent to inviting God to repeat his miracle? I'd have to conclude you're not a bible-literalist?

Isn't life like an interconnected force-field...

Life is definitely interconnected, though I'm not sure I'd call it a 'force-field'.

 

[pds]

 

[Cat]

So what am I doing? I am attempting to reconcile science with my faith, and have done at least an OK job of it. I don't have answers to a couple of issues, and I admit it, but I don't think I quite fit into your blind faith stereotype.

As you only contradict what I said without giving any arguments at all why I would be wrong or why my arguments would not be more valid that your supposed and implicit ones, I do in fact think that you do belong in the category of blind faith. For you the bible is true, maybe not literally, but mostly it is true. In your opinion god created the universe and everything in it, he is the ultimate explanation for everything. You keep pointing to your own ignorance in matters of evolutionary biology and to arguments of others, such as creationist websites and the bible itself. However, this is not a valid mode of discussion. Socrates has been quoted as the wisest of men as he admitted his own ignorance: he did so in order to be open for the truth which for others was hidden by their pompous arrogance. Well, in this discussion you, MD, have not been very open. For you the matter is already settled in advance: the bible is true, god is the reason. Then you try to concile it with science, to rationalise this basic, blind belief into something pseudoscientific. This is no bettern thatn astrology. Astrology tries hopelessly to use astronomical data to support its own claims. This is constantly failing, as the basic, blind belief that stars influence our daily life is already assumed to be true from the very beginning. Socrates ignorance was his starting point, he admitted not to know and went in search for the truth, but blind believers assumes one truth from the outset and then try to reconclie other knowledge with it. This leads increasingly to ridiculous additional hpotheses and ultimately to the use of force to defend ones faith, ass has been seen repeatedly in history. You could not publicly declare the earth NOT to be the center of the universe, man NOT to be the pinnacle of creation, the universe NOT to be finite and ordered in seven celestial spheres. One by one the church, despite war and torture, had to relent its claims in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary of its dogmas. Scientist have been killed, tortured and ridiculed for upholding their research which contradicted the church. Like the church of old, you do not seem ready to let go you dogmas, you are not capable of arguing to the contrary as you belief-system is based on faith, not on research. You assume thing to be true, the words of the bible and of preachers, you do not question them, you do not seek truth, you seek rethoric: an empty meaningless way to reconcile faith and science. There is no way to do that. Natural science does not tell us whether there is a god or a soul or not, but it provides an explanation of reality that does not need a god to be true. Why would the bible be true? Because it is the word of god. If god would not exist, the the bible would not be necessarily true. Science con do without gods, souls, karma, phlogiston, life-force etc. and still explain why the thigns work the way that they work. We may never reach the ulitmate reality and fatih will always have the room to claim that that is the place where god resides. This place, however, has been shrinking for ceturies. You cannot use god as an argument: it is an assumption.

 

[dlloyd]

Hmmm, Cat: that was getting too close to a personal attack, try to keep things amiable here, ok?
Anyway, the difference between MD and the ancient church is that MD is not chopping off the heads of anyone who doesn't agree with him. He, so far, has not tried to proselytize or anything like that; in fact, he's been very open to others' ideas. Unlike that last post of yours, he has not tried to put down anyone else's beliefs.
I think that the Bible is not word for word literally true, but there is a lot in there that a lot of people could learn a lot from.

 

[pds]

An interesting link concerning the science vs religion cliché

It has always bothered me when people claim that religion is at war with science. They are not, but particular practioners on both sides have made political decisons for political reasons .... The article makes the argument.

Perhaps it is a difference of definitions as religion is the content of a political institution or "the church."

Interesting site to browse around in...

 

[brianleahy]

I hope we can keep things civil here.
But hey! New vocabulary word everybody: "phlogiston"

phlo•gis•ton

Pronunciation: (flO-jis'ton, -tun), [key]
—n.
a nonexistent chemical that, prior to the discovery of oxygen, was thought to be released during combustion.

I thought it was a typo until I looked it up... great word!